HIT vendors eager to advance the cause of shareable clinical information – and their products – can do so this Spring in a first-of-a-kind interoperability demonstration. ASCO is not primarily a trade or HIT show. It is the central venue for 25,000+ cancer clinicians, researchers, and other stakeholders from around the world. This makes the ASCO Annual Meeting distinct from an HIT conference like HIMSS, the great-grand-daddy of HIT venues and interoperability demonstrations.

Does that make it more attractive or less attractive as a site to show off your interoperability chops?

As a first-ever event, we can’t promise, but we think it is potentially awesome. While HIMSS is great for more reasons than we can list, demonstrating at a scientific/clinical conference like ASCO has some advantages:

 This will be the only HIT demonstration of its kind at the conference.

• It has the full support, sponsorship, branding, and marketing of the host organization.
• Placed in the middle of the show floor, in a theatre setting, there will be high exposure.
• Participation is limited, selection criteria are rigorous.

Goals for the demonstration are to:

•  Show how HIT can improve coordination and quality of care.
• Highlight use of oncology-specific and other open interoperability standards.
• Demonstrate how HIT can link the care team with the patient.
• Reuse clinical data for research, decision support, public health, reimbursement. 

The Society wants to show a broad spectrum of care environments, emphasizing care coordination and data reuse, and is particularly interested in showcasing FHIR, the HL7 CDA Oncology Treatment Plan & Summary, support for genomics in the clinical record, and clinical decision support.

The demonstration will be held at McCormick Place, Chicago, about six weeks after HIMSS, on June 1, 2015, the second day of the Annual Meeting.

Participation requirements and selection criteria are outlined here. The prospectus and application are located here.

Deadline: January 31, 2015 by 11:59 PM EST (this will be extended, but the new date has not yet been announced.)

If you have questions or want to discuss possible use-cases, please contact Liora Alschuler at liora.alschuler@lantanagroup.com or Suzanne Maddux at Suzanne.maddux@asco.org or 571-483-1672.