Closing Out the First-Ever HLTH Meeting in Las Vegas

The first ever HLTH conference capped off today in Las Vegas, Nevada. More than 3500 attendees joined a host of high-profile speakers for the audacious event.

A key selling point for the conference was the number of announcements that were scheduled to come out of it, and there were dozens, ranging from new partnerships or products from industry upstarts to things like former CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt’s new venture firm, Town Hall.

All of those announcements were almost stories-within-the-story. A lot of the buzz around the meeting was about the meeting itself. Backed by more than $5 million in venture money, HLTH aimed to be slick, well curated, and disruptive—that last word was tattooed on a lot of the signage and materials at the Aria Convention Center in Las Vegas.

A lot of people commented on how specific the sessions were, and how the emphasis was on use cases rather than mere concepts. One blockchain session featuring Ted Tanner, Jay Sales, and Walter de Brouwer exemplified that. Though every health tech conference now has a session about the technology, most are just explanatory. The session at HLTH, though, didn’t take the time to explain blockchain again: Instead, it focused on some actual detailed descriptions of potential use cases, and some estimates as to when healthcare could start seeing them take hold.

There was plenty of news to cover and plenty still to come. Healthcare Analytics News™ spoke with a number of experts, including Walter Jin and Gaspard de Dreuzy of Pager, Robin Smith of Orig3n, Nate Gross, MD, of Doximity, and others. Look out for those interviews as our team edits and posts them in the coming weeks.

HLTH is already planning its 2019 incarnation, once again in Las Vegas.

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