"A 'Date' With Innovation" The BluePrintHIT Innovation Summit Series

Last week, the senior management of YourNurseIsOn.com was in Philadelphia for a "date", actually for ten dates, with hospitals and health systems on the cutting edge of healthcare innovation. How does a healthcare IT start-up arrange ten 15-minute "dates" with such prestigious institutions such as Beth Israel Deaconess, Penn Medicine, Saint Barnabas, Geisinger, Christiana, CentraState, MainLine Health, Bucktail Medical Center and others? It is easy! Simply create a world-changing healthcare start-up, like YourNurseIsOn.com, apply to BluePrintHIT's Innovation Summit with dozens of other innovators and hope that you are one of the ten innovative companies chosen from the applicants. If you are chosen, you then have the opportunity for ten 15-minute "dates" with hospitals that are actively seeking innovative solutions. 

Let me explain, BluePrintHIT teamed up with perennial change agents Wil Yu from the ONC and John Moore from Chilmark Research and created a world-class advisory board to bring innovators and hospitals together with the intent of generating real pilots, contracts and healthcare change. Now when I say world class advisory panel, I mean world-class! From the relatively unknown John Halamka ;-) to other CIO, Entrepreneur and academic healthcare leaders, BluePrint has assembled a team of dedicated experts committed to spreading healthcare innovations into practice. Let's not forget BluePrintHIT's incredible team of Mike Squires, Mark Stevens, Rebecca Goldberg and the indefatigable Pam Kaur, all lead by the genius of Vikas Khosla- with the powerful mission to facilitate the adoption healthcare technologies by healthcare institutions. Kudos, to the team!

As for any good "date", there was a lot of preparation: Who are they?; Where are they from?; What could we possibly have in common?; Am I sure about this? LOL!

And, like many "dates" there was a bit of sacrifice: We are driving how far? How much time do we need away? Do I have a baby-sitter? and How much is all of this going to cost?? (We went "dutch" and split the bill ;-). 

Finally, there are the concerns…What if they just don't 'get us'? ; What if they don't like us?; What if they DO?; How do I look?; Anything in my teeth?? And, like most "dates", all of this was needless worry and it all went just fine- heck, it was quite enjoyable even :-)

The general premise of the BluePrintHIT Innovation Summit Series is to bring 10 innovative healthcare IT start-ups together with ten innovative healthcare systems. These companies all enjoy a couple of groundwork-laying sessions about how pilot programs may be structured, expectation setting and progressing through next steps. Throw in a success story or two and everyone is ready to begin looking for a match of their own. Five 15-minute sessions with five "dates" passes quickly and soon it is time for lunch, after which we have five more "dates". At the end of all of the speed-dating, preferences are prioritized and the "super-secret, highly accurate BluePrint algorithms" are employed to find the two best matches for each innovator and healthcare system. This leads to two 30-minute sessions or follow-up "dates" to get to know each other better, decide if there may be a fit and to plan the next steps.

Like this overview video shows:

I am happy to say that they LOVED us! And the feelings were mutual :-) We were matched with two very progressive healthcare systems and look forward to exploring the possibilities of working together with both of them. In true entrepreneur style, we also "got the digits" of a couple of other attractive institutions with a promise to "give them a call sometime" and look forward to doing just that. Without a doubt we would participate again and can highly recommend that any interested innovators and healthcare systems not hesitate, to apply to, and to attend these events…Innovators must remember that you may ONLY be selected for ONE of the summits in the series. Progressive healthcare institutions and systems would be well advised to sponsor and participate in this event…if truly serious about innovation in your organizations.

A heartfelt  "Thank You!!" to all of the organizers, participants and, especially, our "dates" at this inaugural BluePrintHIT Innovation Summit. We cherish our participation in this summit, relish the thoughts of future business relationships and heartily endorse the concept of Healthcare IT start-ups "playing the field" to find suitable partners for sharing our innovations. So check out the BluePrintHIT Innovation Summit Series which is coming soon to the Mid-West and the West Coast, if the Mid-Atlantic Summit was any indicator of future success- You'd better put the date for your "dates" on the calendar ASAP!

If this TweetReach Report is any indicator...This is going to catch on!

Learn more about BluePrintHIT Innovation Summit HERE

Learn more about YourNurseIsOn.com HERE

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HealthCampCT@Yale: HealthCamp goes to the Ivy Leagues

On April 2. 2011 the future of healthcare descended upon the Yale School of Nursing in New Haven, CT. In the form of an un-conference called HealthCampCT@Yale, forty healthcare visionaries, technologists, academics, patients and providers came together to explore challenges, successes and failures of our current healthcare system in an open-sourced, collaborative environment. Hosted by the venerable Yale School of Nursing, a world leader in Nursing education and healthcare leadership, and produced by the HealthCamp Foundation, HealthCampCT@Yale was the very first HealthCamp held in CT and a wonderful start it was! Months of planning and logistics culminated in an event that was world-class in its attendees, presenters, audience and participation. One measure of its success was the reach of the event on the internet and through social media. A "TweetReach" report of the event showed that they reached over 85,000 people with nearly 1.1 MILLION internet "impressions" in a single day!! This is a remarkable amount of impact from a inaugural event and bodes well for the future of HealthCamps in Connecticut. This was accomplished in spite of traditional media outlets such as the New Haven Register and WTNH television providing no coverage of the event (despite repeated requests :-(. The success of events, such as this one, despite the lack of traditional media involvement is a net positive for social media, Connecticut's citizenry and for grassroots initiatives world-wide and clearly demonstrates that their is a new way to share information that doesn't require approval, ad revenue or corporate censorship. WooHoo!

The local organizing team consisted of forward thinking Yale School of Nursing (YSN)Faculty members Judy Kunich and Margaret Moss, incredible leadership by Veronica Goode from YSN Dean Margaret Grey's office, and Yale Alumni Joseph Cerro and Matthew Browning. This team was augmented by the founders of the HealthCamp Foundation Mark Scrimshire and Maumi JC Chatterton. Further invaluable support was provided by YSN's Frank Grosso, Steve Varley, John Powers, Adam Humme and Neal Greene. After several meetings, piles of paper and complex coordination, the framework for bringing HealthCamp to the Ivy League was completed. With YSN now hosting the event at their facility, we were free to find sponsors for the event. Sponsors included Independent Software, Global Entertainment & Media, The Donaghue Foundation, Health 2.0, The Yale Rudd Center, FairCareMD, Family Medicine Rocks, and even support from RWJF and The Future of Nursing. This was augmented with support from many "Friends of HealthCamp" and my company, YourNurseIsOn.com. No conference can run without food and our incredible, healthy catering was provided by Jenelle's of New Haven.

Finally, April 2nd arrived and HealthCampers began to arrive at YSN as early as 7 a.m. to begin the set-up of the topic board, the food and the all important coffee. With the help of our AWESOME volunteers Phoebe Browning, Christopher Adams, Ann Marie Adams and others, we made quick work of it and settled into our breakfast and networking. Soon, Mark issued a call for topics and attendees wrote their ideas and interests on index cards which were then added to the schedule board for the day. Rooms and time slots quickly filled up and we even added a lunchtime walking tour of the neighborhood's revitalization, tree-planting, organic gardening and urban farm. The completed schedule can be found here- HealthCampCT Schedule

The sessions were lively and engaging, the presentees and attendees collaborated and sparred on different ideas, possibilities and solutions to complex healthcare challenges and issues. At times consensus was reached, agreements achieved and solutions created and at other times disagreements were aired, parochial paradigms deconstructed and agreements to agree to disagree were the outcome. Overall many important ideas were shared and explored, many new friends were made and many possibilities for next steps embraced by those in attendance. There was a non-stop stream of commentary on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and YouTube- We even had live-streaming on the internet accessible through the HealthCamp Foundations site via Ustream. Did I mention over 1 MILLION internet impressions for this event in a SINGLE day?? WOW!

Two morning time slots with 4 sessions each brought us to that incredible lunch from Jenelle's in New Haven!! YUM! Three salads, two main courses and one wonderful dessert later it was definitely time for the walking tour. A quick trip around 2 blocks near Yale showed the concepts of HealthCamp in action; houses rehabilitated and lived in, perennial flower gardens, organic inner-city food plots, urban chickens, renewed tree planting and the fostering of a healthy community for area residents as the very real results of one HealthCamper's vision and dedication to the neighborhood. The invigorating walk cleared the lunchtime lethargy and prepared HealthCampers for a rigorous afternoon of eight more sessions followed by a debriefing for the day's events and reluctant goodbyes. For those who couldn't yet part ways, the Camp continued at Kelly's on Crown with our wonderful host Patrick for some cold drinks, warm food and hot conversations. HealthCamp@Yale was a wonderful introduction for Connecticut to the amazing, grassroots work of the HealthCamp Foundation and we eagerly look forward to next year's event!

A big "THANK YOU!!" to all of the Yale School of Nursing, the organizing team, our incredible sponsors, dedicated volunteers, amazing attendees and, of course, to the HealthCamp Foundation for turning this concept from a potential possibility to a redefining reality. Kudos!

For more information about Yale School Of Nursing  - Click Here

For More Information about HealthCamp  -  http://healthca.mp/

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YourNurseIsOn.com CEO Matthew Browning receives the Shorty Award for "Nurse of the Year" from Nurse Jackie's Stephen Wallem (Nurse Thor)

WOW!! We just won a Shorty Award for "Nurse of the Year"! And, it was presented by Stephen Wallem from Showtime's Nurse Jackie series!! Thank You to all of you who voted for us!!






This was my 140 character acceptance speech-

I THANK my Family, Team, Tweeps, the "Academy" & YourNurseIsOn.com for allowing me to serve #Nurses & #Healthcare providers around the World!




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YourNurseIsOn.com gets a "spark"

This is a very cool video tool from our friends at Call2Action- Thanks Tristan!

YourNurseIsOn.com at HIMSS11 - Gaining Global Attention (Thanks Schwartz Communications & Twitter!)

YourNurseIsOn.com was chosen as the winner of Schwartz Communications Twitter Contest and won a professionally produced video, as seen below. If you'd like to gain GLOBAL attention simply create an awesome product, build a great company, work with world-reknowned customers and use Schwartz Communications to help get the word out at a world-class event like HIMSS11 !! WOW!




Please share your thoughts, your comments and this post below.


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YourNurseIsOn.com at HIMSS11 - The Journey Begins

The “Olympics” of Healthcare IT is the huge annual HIMSS conference and YourNurseIsOn.com was excited to go to HIMSS11 in Orlando. Like any start-up company, our people wear a number of hats, are busy and occasionally, make mistakes. I recount this story as an example of logistical challenges, flexible responses, dogged determination and perseverance in pursuit the mission. To attend HIMSS11, I needed to depart Hartford, CT on February 19 and would return February 24th. My plan was to attend the HIT Investor Forum on Sunday, we had been selected as a contestant in the HIT X.0 “Geeks Got Challenge” for Monday, hoped to make it to the finals for Tuesday and also expected to spend considerable time at booth #1331 which we shared with Intelligent Insites, our newest integration partners. Simple enough, right?

Wrong! To be more efficient, my executive assistant (me), attempted to book the hotels and travel for two conferences simultaneously and was quite satisfied to have found great deals for both HIMSS11 and the upcoming ACHE Congress in Chicago. The error in my ways became evident on the way to the airport when my lovely wife, Phoebe, began to call the airport to confirm our timely departure during a very windy afternoon. “MATTHEW!,” she shouted from the passenger seat, startling me from my “did I forget to pack anything” thought process, “THESE tickets are for MARCH 19th...”.

Now showing up to your flight without a valid ticket is rather frowned upon in this country, and can lead to a lovely discussion with various customer service “overlords.”

The very “helpful” woman on JetBlue’s “help” line nicely reminded me that ONLY an ignoramus would not bother to check his reservation 42 times before leaving the house to depart on the aforementioned non-existent flight. “Really?” I enquired, imagine for a second that you worked 80 hours per week for the last 3 years, hadn’t had a “day off” in month’s and gave up sleep for Lent so that you could facilitate a new integration, a new pilot implementation, prepare for a worldwide IT competition and , of course, arrange your travel... none of that lends itself to being perfect and may have even contributed to my glaring oversight. So, I askedfar to nicely, when you are done lecturing me on proper flight reservation review protocol, would you please tell me how I can fix this major faux pas?

Oh that would be easy, she let me know, it is nothing that $750 dollars ADDITIONAL couldn’t fix. Is there no other way I implored, as she wallowed in her customer service power trip. “No!” was all I heard. Now, I know that any well-meaning organization can mistakenly hire an anti-social troglodyte ;-) ( or more likely she was just having her own struggles that day), but having flown JetBlue many times, I hoped there might be a better way. So, I thanked her for her abuse and hung up in disgust, almost believing her about how dumb I had been to not check my reservation 42 times! This had never happened to me in 30 years of solo air travel. How the heck was I going to get to Orlando? by tomorrow morning? should I go at all? should I fly out tomorrow? how about from NYC or?? and how the hell did I do this? A  few deep breaths later, I realized it is a mistake, decided it will be remedied and proceeded to the airport to beg for mercy. Did I mention logistical challenges?

At the Hartford airport, I proceeded to the JetBlue counter, without my bags, to see if there was ANYTHING that could be done. I was helped by two incredible customer service dynamos, Julie and Juan. “Night and day” could not even begin to describe the contrast between the telephone “service” we’d received and the exemplary service provided by these two. I explained by plight, and explained my needs. They apologized to me for the inconvenience and proceeded to squeeze me onto the next flight with the slightest of penalties for my incorrect reservation, and my eternal gratitude. They absolutely gained a customer for life and my respect for their professionalism, which I immediately conveyed to their manager and the world. This is the type of flexible response that we will model for our own customer service.

Upon landing in Orlando I went to the hotel to find that I had, of course, booked the hotel at the same time as the flight- with the same incorrect dates... unbelievable! The Days Inn “convention center” informed me that they had NO room for me that evening but that they COULD accommodate me for Sunday through Thursday. Whew! Lucky me, I got a room across the street form HIMSS11 at the very last minute. However, that left me stuck in Orlando, with no rooms available anywhere in town, at 9 pm on a Saturday evening. Tired, hungry, and needing a place to crash, we went into our  creative, problem-solving, startup company mode...How do we accomplish the objective with the resources at hand? I had web-access and 30,000 friends, or soon to be friends, attending HIMSS11 with me- maybe one of them could help? A simple twitter request was re-tweeted by friends and lead to a wonderful late night discussion with a doctor friend from NYC before retiring to his extra hotel bed (Thanks again, Doc!). Lying down, exhausted, in the dark before visiting the sandman, I reflected on the day and decided that my dogged determination not only got me to HIMSS11 in time for Sunday’s kick-off, but was largely responsible for YourNurseIsOn.com’s amazing success at reinventing healthcare staff communications by creating an entirely new way to communicate, from a simple sketch on a napkin to an effective software as a service.

Perseverance plus presence equals opportunity, and our ability to rally, be flexible and to adapt to rapidly changing terrain allowed us to persevere through our travel challenges, to be present at HIMSS11 for the HIT Investor Forum on Sunday and to avail ourselves of the numerous opportunities present in a room full of HIT movers and shakers. The challenges that we overcame en-route lent perspective and clarity to the mission of the trip. This wasn’t optional, debatable or impossible- period! It was going to happen, had to happen and in true start-up fashion it did happen. I don’t present this story to wave my mistake to the world, but rather as an example of the “never say quit” spirit of new entrepreneurs worldwide who go “all in” to innovate, disrupt and change paradigms, possibilities and potential. The obstacles are “barriers to entry” and if you allow them to stop your mission, you will certainly fail. My advice to those visionaries, change agents and disruptors is simple- If you experience an adversarial customer “service” person, a logistical nightmare or seemingly insurmountable odds- don’t despair! Work the plan, be creative, solve the problems, side step and keep on dancing to your own tune. If you are true to your “music”, your vision is unclouded, and your motives are pure- your chances of success increase greatly. No one but yourself can make you stop pursuing the dream and, I don’t know about you, but nothing (and I mean NOTHING) is going to stop me from sharing YourNurseIsOn.com with the world! Good luck with YOUR journey! I believe you can do it, and look forward to your successes. 

Thank You.

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YourNurseIsOn.com and Pecha Kucha - Interconnectivity as a Way of Life

YourNurseIsOn.com CEO Matthew Browning will be presenting "Interconnectivity" in New Haven, CT at Bentara Restaurant on Wednesday November 3rd at 6pm as part of the Pecha Kucha Event. Pecha Kucha means "chit chat" and is a presentation formatted with 20 slides presented for 20 seconds each slide. "Chit chat" is as is as ancient and traditional as "Interconnectivity" between humans; Pecha Kucha and YourNurseIsOn.com just give them a kiss of modernity with a disruptive twist. Please join us for an evening of wonderful presenters and novel ideas. YourNurseisOn.com is pleased to have been invited to participate in the wonderful event and looks forward to an incredible evening.

Learn more about YourNurseIsOn.com's patent-pending communications revolution here at 

YourNurseIsOn.com

Learn more about Pecha Kucha New Haven here- Pech Kucha New Haven, CT

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