LISAvienna: A look back at conhIT 2017

From April 25 to 27, 2017, Europe’s leading healthcare IT trade fair and conference took place in Berlin under the slogan “10 years of conhIT – combining health and innovative IT”. Out of the 23 participating organizations from Austria, six had travelled from Vienna.

conhIT is tailored towards decision-makers who wish to inform themselves about current IT developments in healthcare, to establish contacts in the industry, and to further educate themselves at an advanced level. As an integrated, complete event, it bundles three basic offerings for the industry in three days. conhIT, which was initiated as an industry meeting for healthcare IT by Bundesverband Gesundheits-IT – bvitg e.V. and organised by Messe Berlin in 2008, has become Europe’s most important healthcare IT event with roughly 9,000 guests. More than 500 exhibitors will present at the Berlin trade fair grounds on more than 20,000 m² of exhibition space, among them 23 Austrian organizations, six of which are from Vienna. Eighteen companies and research institutions took advantage of the Austrian shared stand, which was organized by the commercial department of the Austrian embassy in Berlin. An additional five companies were represented as standalone exhibitors. LISAvienna on the one hand represented participants from Vienna and, on the other hand, it acted as a central point of contact for interested parties from all over the world.

conhIT combined a trade fair, congress, and networking, once again showing how diverse healthcare IT can be. Moreover, topics ranged from IT security and electronic medical records to apps and usability.

For instance, demonstrations included solutions which will allow doctors to send findings and images through secure channels in the future to obtain straightforward opinions from peers. Notably, these solutions must be made user friendly so that they may be easily used in practice. Furthermore, the issue of interoperability was also a topic at the event: The grapevine project was presented to the international public for the first time at conhIT. This non-proprietary initiative pursues the goal of establishing a global data exchange standard, allowing for the interoperability of various systems. To that end, it combines various IT providers, suppliers, and integrators. Martin Tiani, CEO of Grapevine World, provides some background: “In the past, millions were spent on proprietary IT systems – without a measurable impact. Our goal is to bring everything under one standardization regime and establish uniform standards, benefitting all parties involved. Grapevine is the first initiative that focuses on global overall development and strives to integrate all market participants in a non-proprietary manner.”

One of the numerous side events at conhIT was the “Appcircus” pitching event. Appcircus organizes over 50 events in more than 30 countries every year and connects app developers with investors. This supports the development of innovative and high-quality apps. Vienna-based company Medicus managed to become a finalist with its app. In an exciting match, the Belgian company FibrinCheck was ultimately able to emerge victorious.

An overview of the participating organisations:

In the coming year, the event will take place from April 17 to 19. We invite interested parties from Vienna to get in touch with us if they are considering attending conhIT 2018. However, it is recommended that they visit the eHealth Summit Austria beforehand – it will take place at the Schönbrunn palace from May 23 to 24, 2017.  

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