The AHIP Conference

There is always a debate on what conferences to attend and what to not, if you are a vendor. Where do you get max ROI for your investment? Well after all the debate the best way to find out is to attend one and decide if you are going to attend the next year. So I attended the AHIP conference in Las Vegas.

My first impression of the conference was - it was worth it. The who's who of the industry was there, the right levels that a vendor needs to sell were present. The booth floor was huge, I did not expect it to be so big.

None the less here are a few key things I captured of my one day visit.

• Sun Microsystem launched "Payor Alliance" an alliance of Sun partners that will be able to provide end to end technology solution for driving consumerism in Payers
• Healthways had a good presence, I attended one of the sessions on Disease Management and I thought it was very informative and appropriate.
• A key area of interest for me has been the evolution of Offshore vendors in the healthcare market. I saw booths from Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant and VeeJee Technologies.
• IBM locked down its blues customers in a private dinner, not sure how the NASCO initiative is going for them.
• Intuit and Ingenix had their good presence, and Intuit showcased Quiken for Healthcare, interesting product - time will tell if they have hit the bulls eye.

I only wished I had more time to spend at AHIP. Other than consumerism and disease management I did not hear many key words that have been the buzz in the Health Plan Industry. Maybe had "Sicko" been released before the conference the themes could have been a little more spicier.

If you wish to build a networks in Health Plans - AHIP is definitely a conference to attend.