This week saw the second of May’s major healthcare IT events take place in the UK, Health+In4matics.

The timing of the show meant that it went virtually head to head with HC2012, which was held last week in London and has been in existence for more than 28 years.

The first show (HC2012), which is backed by both the Guardian and British Computer Society (BCS), appeared to have a more unique conference programme, with several of the health IT big shots taking up speaking slots as well as keynotes including Earl Howe, Jim Easton, Mike Farrar and Katie Davis. This attracted hundreds of the 1,500 attendees to packed conference sessions but perhaps away from the exhibition floor, which was relatively small in size but managed to draw in virtually all of the big players including Harris, Cerner, CSC, Allscripts, BT and Epic.

New kid on the block In4matics, which was supported by HIMSS drew in speakers including Dame Fiona Caldicott and Stephen Dorrell MP, as well as those well known professionals that regularly run the health IT events circuit. However, despite nearly double the floor space being taken up by exhibitors, the show’s focus appeared to be much more around SME’s and it saw fewer of the giants whose stands towered the halls of HC2012. Final attendee numbers are still to be announced but were clearly considerably lower.

While chitchat at these events is usually centred around what the activity is like in the marketplace, many conversations were dominated by which event had worked better, which had more delegates and ultimately, which one would survive, with many suppliers hoping common sense would prevail to provide one springtime super conference.

An answer already appears to be emerging… No sooner was In4matics over than it had placed a large advert on its website announcing the show dates for next year. On top of that, HIMSS and In4matics formalised their strategic alliance announcing that HIMSS has taken a financial interest in Citadel (the organisers of the show) to “provide a strong, integrated platform for health information technology events in the United Kingdom.”

However, with In4matics virtually set in stone for next year, it has also been interesting to see the announcement by HIMSS last week that a memorandum of understanding has been signed that will see HIMSS collaborate with the BCS to introduce HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Records Adoption Model in the UK.

So with HIMSS appearing to have its finger in a number of pies, we wait to see whether all those pies can come together to provide the health IT industry with one huge feast on an exhibition in 2013. My prediction…there will only be two key health IT events over 2013 and both will be in Birmingham!

Mark Venables, Founder member of One Health Alliance & CEO Highland Marketing

On the back of a bad week for the British economy where real growth is looking like a distant prospect with the news of double dip recession, it was nice to see lots of familiar faces (both NHS as well as suppliers) with an optimistic outlook at HC2012. I had many interesting conversations, some around disruptive innovations and some focused on business models, some about recent procurement decisions, all looking forward to the opportunity to participate in the much talked about change in the NHS.

The conference agenda was certainly interesting with a good mix of speakers and topics covering the national policy through to clinical engagement.

Jim Easton’s keynote was informative, his call for ‘Informatics to be a frontline service driving the integration’ and ‘making the information flow and empowering the people’ is welcome news for the informatics community. Further endorsement of this will be the clarity and commitment of some money for frontline IT on the back of the upcoming and eagerly anticipated Information Strategy. What is worrying is, there were repeated messages in his speech about budget squeeze; ‘the current efficiency savings being implemented across the NHS are a dress rehearsal for the next 20 years’, ‘it is going to get harder as we go on, we know we did the easier things first and if you look at the Chancellor’s budget, deep structural change is going to be with us for the next decade’.

For those that missed it, Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre’s keynote made some predictions on the role of NHSIC in connecting up the primary and secondary care data and its new powers from 2013. He made an interesting reference to being allowed to handle the patient identifiable data, which was one of the key sticking points when the NHS reform bill was being passed. It will be interesting to see how the much talked about Open Data will enable the supplier community to commercialise some of this data?

I noticed there was still a lot of speculation about life after the National Programme and the role of the central agencies is still less clear in practice, particularly amongst the suppliers and NHS community.

I also found the announcement around the coming together of HIMSS Analytics Europe and BCS to bring the EMR adoption model to UK hospitals in order to allow the UK to benchmark itself against the rest of the world an interesting one, although, I would have liked to have seen more debate and engagement on the model at the conference. Perhaps this is only the beginning and more will be coming?

The question I was looking to get answered was around how SME’s are doing. Do they feel more engaged? Are they seeing more business opportunities? Is the landscape getting better for them? Though they certainly see improved engagement, informal conversations indicate that it is still the game of big boys. We all know that SME sector is important to the British economic recovery, it is equally important to keep the innovation going in the NHS and to the recovery of the NHS IT market.

Someone at the conference said, ‘a medal should go to Mike Sinclair for organising HC2012, and engaging the SME sector.’ I will vote for that and hope that enough is being done to keep the brand alive for years to come!  More engagement from all stakeholders and in particular SME suppliers and NHS decision makers will be the key to its continued success. HC used to be a conference that inspired; sadly I didn’t get inspired this year!

Ravi Kumar, Healthcare entrepreneur and chairman at ZANEC Technologies