Announced today is a partnership in the works for some time: mHealth Summit will now be convened and managed by HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society). The mHealth Summit is easily the largest global meeting on mobile health and is unique in bringing together the perspectives of mHealth researchers and physicians along with the international community and the wireless health industry.
In part, the move of the mHealth Summit from its original home at the Foundation for NIH (FNIH) is a result of its phenomenal growth in just three years, starting from less than 500 participants to over 4000 participants. This necessitated move to very large venue in the Washington DC area as well as incredibly complex logistics of managing the program, vendors and facility. As the meeting grew in scope and expense, it started to become unwieldy for the heroic but small staff at the FNIH.
While the roots of FNIH and HIMSS are obviously different, we are assured by Richard Scarfo, now vice President, Vendor Events at HIMSS with oversight over the mHealth Summit and previously director of the summit while he was at FNIH, that the unique mission of the mHealth Summit, to bring together “government, private sector/industry, academia, and not-for-profit organizations” will be preserved. As he told us, the 2012 Summit will look much the same as before, just that “the two logos at the top will switch places”
At the same time, bringing the Summit under HIMSS immediately brings many advantages. The logistical and financial resources available for organizing a rapidly growing meeting are immediately upgraded. Other resources, such as the mHIMSS portal can be incorporated and a much more robust support for media will be available.
iMedicalApps will again be providing high quality coverage – see our detailed coverage of the 2011 meeting here – and we will also be ramping our efforts for the 2012 Summit. Stay tuned for more announcements regarding our partnership with the Summit in the coming months.
