Outpatient App hit the road during this past mid-August fortnight attending two important Military Health System (MHS) conferences. The Defense Health Information Technology Symposium (DHITS) in New Orleans was presented by Defense Health Agency (DHA) and featured enterprise health software systems and related IT companies along with DHA leadership.
Cybersecurity is an obvious critical component for MHS overall, making it a big focus at this event. Several of our conversations centered around security and compliance steps we’ve completed. Navigating the MHS organization is always a big topic too, and for Outpatient App, how our systems apply equally across the Tri Services (Army, Navy, and Air Force medical services).
Our colleague, Col Elizabeth Somsel also attended DHITS and joined in some of our meetings. She is now deputy Command Surgeon (SG2) for Air Force Global Strike, and recently transitioned from Dyess as Medical Group Commander. Col Somsel has tracked our work for several years now and her representation of the on-base Medical Group viewpoint was invaluable.
We also had two Student Interns from Tulane helping with our Booth, which is now the second conference event this summer where they’ve helped. It is awesome to observe their reaction and respect for the MHS mission and people who serve. Equally great too, however, is the other side – reaction of the MHS leaders interacting with them. A highlight was seeing them brief the Honorable Dr Lester Martinez-Lopez, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health.
We brought along some new swag to give away including our new velcro patches, shirts, pens, flashlights and golf gear.
The following week, the Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) was held just south of Orlando in Kissimmee, FL. While broader than Health IT, MHSRS covers all areas of medical innovation, research and technology development.
In addition to many similar discussions with MHS Medical and IT leaders, this one was much more focused on medical research. There were literally several thousand research poster presentations covering all aspects of medical treatments, devices, tools and other areas.
For MHSRS, our colleague Tina Bove came down and joined Brian and me for the week. Tina is also a long-time teammate and helps navigate the system from the east coast. Some of the highlights at this one included meeting several new faces at existing on-base customers, including representatives from Eglin AFB, Travis AFB, and Joint Base San Antonio. In addition, we connected with potential teaming partners – which can be a key asset for a smaller company navigating this industry.
The combination of these events back to back provided an excellent opportunity to collaborate and meet with nearly all phases of MHS, including DHA and each of the primary Tri-Services. This is an important part of our maturation within the MHS environment. We have succeeded fairly well within the Air Force and are now gaining interest more broadly.
More than a few people commented on these two large conferences being held back to back. We talked with several teams attending both, just like we were. Outpatient App was an exhibitor sponsor at both events, which is a decent undertaking for our team. However, the benefits were clear and visibility across the enterprise was well worth the effort. Thank you to everyone who we met and look forward to collaborating with you in the future.
