By Clinical Informatics News Staff 

March 24, 2014 | The 2014 Medical Informatics World Conference in Boston (April 28-29) will draw together experts in the application of IT to healthcare delivery, with representatives of payers, providers, patient groups and pharma sharing their ideas and innovations. Co-located with the industry mainstay Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, the Medical Informatics World Conference will for the second year provide a venue to discuss the next step in biomedical IT: applying frontline data technology to real patient care.

Four conference tracks will concentrate on the collaboration between different stakeholders; helping patients be active partners in their healthcare; understanding patient populations; and data security and privacy. Here is a sampling of the talks we’re excited to attend at this year’s conference.

—The Editors

In the opening keynote, Susan Dentzer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will lead a panel including Jacob Reider (HHS), John Halamka (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and Sachin Jain (Merck) to discuss how a rapidly growing IT environment can allow all players in the healthcare system to interact, innovate and directly impact patient care. Monday, April 28, 9:40 am  

Hadi Kharrazi (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) helps Accountable Care Organizations to navigate the requirements for meaningful use of health metrics in the ACA, and to leverage these requirements toward real benefits for patients and providers. Monday, April 28, 11:25 am 

Susan Woods (Veterans Health Administration and Society of Participatory Medicine) moderates a patient panel in which contributors recall their experiences using technology tools to become informed, empowered patients, and sharing those insights with others. Monday, April 28, 11:50 am 

Joseph Kvedar (Partners HealthCare) advocates for creating IT systems for automated patient communication, to encourage patients to take an active role in their own care through strategies like coaching, incentivization and social networking. Monday, April 28, 3:45 pm 

Alan Krumholz (Mayo Clinic Health System) explains how his organization has joined EMRs with its own analytics platform to help predict patients’ risks for readmission, and to monitor its performance against other large care providers. Monday, April 28, 4:35 pm 

Samantha Meikle (London Connect) shares lessons from the city of London’s efforts to enforce interoperability of health records while protecting privacy, by offering greater control of data to patients. Tuesday, April 29, 10:45 am 

Joel Vengco (Baystate Health) shares strategies for moving from fee-for-service to pay-for-performance healthcare. Tuesday, April 29, 11:10 am 

In Tuesday’s closing keynote, Daniel Sands, co-founder of the Society of Participatory Medicine, will moderate a panel with Bryan Sivak (HHS), Roy Beveridge (Humana) and Mark Davies (UK NHS) to consider what barriers remain to sharing data, and the responsibility for care, with patients. Tuesday, April 29, 2:30 pm