Scott Thomas and I just came back from the Cerner Health Conference in Kansas City. What an incredible experience. It was the 40th anniversary of Cerner so this was a significant event and a proud moment for the organization. I remember the first time I attended the event back in 2003 when I was working for IBM (a large Cerner partner at the time) and had the privilege of presenting our clinical genomics strategy and results to the audience.

Day 1: Exploring Now/Next and HealtheIntent at the Cerner Health Conference

The theme of the show was Now/Next to represent the capabilities that exist today and where Cerner is going in the marketplace to continue to add value and improve health outcomes. The event was packed with inspirational speakers, clients leveraging the Cerner solutions to achieve incredible results, and partners that Cerner has cultivated to rapidly provide value-based solutions to their clients. I believe there were over 10,000 people in attendance at the event.

One theme was very clear: HealtheIntent is a strategic foundation driving many of Cerner’s strategic initiatives, whether around CRM and Salesforce, Cerner’s new Consumer Portal Framework, or their Clinical Learning Health Network driving clinical research initiatives. I walked away from the show with the incredible knowledge  that Cerner is helping to solve the Quadruple Aim and tangential challenges we are facing in the industry. Their strategy is comprehensive and they are executing making a difference with their clients today.

The event started off on Monday with two incredible speakers. The first amazing, inspirational keynote was Col. Nicole Malachowski, a combat veteran and the first woman pilot on the Thunderbirds. She discussed her career, her goals, and how we must never write ourselves out of our own life’s script. As she stated so eloquently: “Failure is the price of entry if you want to do something great.”

Next, David Pogue, a Tech Columnist with the NY Times and bestselling author, talked about technology’s impact on society. His discussion was incredibly insightful and very humorous. His biggest focus was the impact of embedded technologies in our lives today and in the future, leveraging AI technologies to complement, analyze, and monitor those devices.

Day 2: Improving operations and patient outcomes with technology

The next day started with keynotes from Matt Wood from Amazon and Brent Shafer, CEO of Cerner. Cerner and AWS made a strategic announcement recently that will have a significant impact on healthcare outcomes. Brent talked about the history of Cerner, the innovation they have driven over the years and their focus on making our healthcare experiences better every day. Of course, he talked about the improved SaaS platform driven by AWS and Salesforce and their focus on being the acknowledged source of curated health data to better manage risk and even improve drug discovery.

We are at an inflection point where, as an industry, we have gotten the foundation in place with EMRs. Now with HealtheIntent, Cerner has been capturing and aggregating the data (both from Cerner and non-Cerner EMRs, as well as from other external sources) to discover clinical insights that can drive better health and value. With partnerships like the one with Salesforce it’s now possible to put this into action by engaging patients in new ways. Similarly, Brent announced Project Apollo, which will leverage the AWS infrastructure and bring a cognitive approach to practicing medicine.

The numerous, insightful sessions focused for the most part on how Cerner clients were able to leverage technology to improve operations and patient outcomes. The event closed with a fantastic party at the Power and Light district in Downtown KC.  

It was an honor to be able to attend the event and to say we are partners with such great companies as Cerner and Salesforce. We look forward to doing great things with our collective clients as they begin and evolve in their journey to better engage their consumers leveraging a clinically informed CRM.

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