By Dana Connors, AcademyHealth
We all know that nerds, categorically, are passionate. As a first class nerd myself, I can attest. Whether we’re sitting in front of our massive screens, geeking out on tumbling piles of video games, or nerding away in a dusty pile of books at the University library, you are bound to have trouble directing your household nerd away from his or her passionate focus. This holds true for health care geeks as well (and our passion for hand sanitizer). If you were searching for a place to geek out with a variety of other health care nerds, Concordium 2015 was the venue for you.
Much like a health care Comic-Con, AcademyHealth holds a symposium once a year to bring together the stakeholders of the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum network: data scientists, informaticians, researchers, clinicians, policymakers and other experts in the field of health data and analytics. 2015 marked the first year for Concordium, which presented the opportunity to pair these stakeholders, the dorks of delivery system design and development, with the researchers and scientists who meet annually for AcademyHealth’s Delivery System Science meeting. The result was a combination of conceptualization, conversation and scientific research to integrate useful and transferable evidence, practice, and policy, to bring about delivery system transformation. Personally, I’ve never seen so many difficult-to-describe passions in one room, or been so engrossed in fascinating data driven conversation.
Concordium is the only meeting of its kind to incorporate the brightest in health informatics and experts in health care policy, technology and execution. It was also the first domestic conference to be accredited by Patients Included, a designation that required the patient perspective to be represented in panels across the program as well as in the audience. Whether policy nerds, data geeks, health care dorks, or just plain passionate people fill out your diversity portfolio, Concordium seems to be the place to find them.
I am now excited to help with the process of building the Concordium 2016 program. As we convene our advisory committee, we are again including diversity of experience and perspective, including patients and caregivers, system clinicians and academic researchers, public health and federal policy professionals, and health technology entrepreneurs. These stakeholders will guide our priorities and outlook, and help to shape the conference, poster sessions and panels around the cutting edge research received through the call for submissions. More importantly, they’ll make for riveting side conversations and a truly integrated fabric of the entire nerd spectrum.
In 2016 I hope we can incorporate even more diverse perspectives and expertise including health technology designers and producers. I hope we can utilize the time together to fill the gaps in communication and perspective between researchers developing policy, technologists creating tools, and clinicians using them to not only grow our capability to produce better outcomes, but to develop a reliable feedback loop in which each link in the chain is comfortable and acquainted with their counterparts. At Concordium 2016 the diversity of attendance will bring us one step closer to consistent and reliable communication between the sanitized hands who are transforming the health care facilities of today and the bright minds who are building the learning health systems of the future. We’re all nerds here, so come geek out with us!
Dana E. Connors serves as the project manager for the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum, an AcademyHealth project supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). In addition to programmatic development for the Concordium meeting, he nerds out on budgets, contracts and project work plans. He is helping to manage the continued growth of eGEMS, an open access journal of the EDM Forum focused on using electronic health data to advance research and quality improvement and supports stakeholder outreach, collaborative projects, and the sustainability efforts of the EDM Forum.