Before HIMSS existed, healthcare IT professionals attended conferences organized by other groups like the American Hospital Association and IBM user groups. The AHA annual convention and IBM's ECHO conference were major events in the 1960s-1970s. Local chapters of the Healthcare Financial Management Association were also important meeting places. HIMSS began as the Hospital Management Systems Society in the mid-1960s and changed its name to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in 1986 to represent both clinical and financial IT professionals. One of the early HIMSS conferences in 1987 had 525 attendees, demonstrating its growth from earlier organizations.

1. “H.I.S.-tory” by
Vince Ciotti
© 2011 H.I.S. Professionals, LLC, all rights reserved
Episode # 43:
Before
HIMSS!?

2. What Came Before HIMSS?
• Since everyone is at HIMSS this week, it seems only fitting to
interrupt our HIS-tory segment on vendors one more time...
• Just what came before HIMSS? For some of today’s younger CIOs
today, the question may be “Did anything” come before HIMSS??
• Well, hold on to your badges as we delve back into pre-HIStory to
tell about what “DP Managers” went to before there were CIOs
• American Hospital Association (AHA) –
way back in the 60s & 70s, the “place to
be” for HIS vendors was the AHA’s
Annual Convention, where mainframe
makers like IBM and the BUNCH group
competed with the likes of Hill-Rom and
Baxter for floor space. I was in
installations at SMS at the time, so I
never got to go – that privilege was for

3. Big Blue’s Convention!
• But even the AHA Convention paled in comparison to IBM’s own
“user group” (that name hadn’t been invented yet!) known as:
– Electronic Computing Health Oriented, or ECHO. I hope you
appreciate the photo on slide 1, which is of an actual ECHO
folder I collected at the first one I attended over 30 years ago
in 1980 at the beautiful Del Coronado Hotel in San Diego.
– I was working in marketing for McAuto by then and so earned
the right to mingle with several hundred DP Directors there…
- We were trying to sell our Tandem-
based PCS (Patient Care System), or DEC-
based HDC mini system, but as you might
imagine, they got little traction with the
DP Directors back then who were eager
to learn about the latest IBM offerings in
their 43XX and 30XX mainframes...

4. And Don’t Forget HFMA’s ANI!
• Back in the 70s & 80s, another powerhouse
annual meeting place was the Healthcare
Financial Management Association’s ANI (Annual
National Institute), the place to meet CFOs!
– Remember, back then, DP/MIS departments generally
reported to the Controller. Just like HIMSS gave
credence to the title “CIO” in the 80s & 90s, HFMA had
given meaning to the title CFO in the 60s & 70s.
• When I was running marketing for HIS Inc. in
Brooklyn in the early 80s, we exhibited at many
regional conferences, long before any vendor
ever heard of HIMSS, let alone sent a booth there:
– NEHA – the New England Health Association in Boston
– MAHC – Mid-Atlantic Health Congress in Atlantic City
– WHA – Western Hospital Association in San Francisco

5. Local HFMA Chapters
• The place to be to meet
prospect and client DP
Managers and Controllers was
your state’s local HFMA chapter.
• They not only held frequent
seminars that we tried to give
our pitches at, but actually gave
you a chance to work shoulder
to shoulder with hospital
professionals, like this hard-
working group on the left from
my days in NJ’s HFMA chapter
MIS committee in the late 80s
• (Don’t worry Eileen, Paul & Gil, I
won’t give out your last names…

6. HIMSS HIS-tory
• There’s a wonderful pdf file on HIMSS complete history at:
– http://www.himss.org/content/files/HIMSS_HISTORY.pdf
• HIMSS started as HMSS (Hospital Management Systems Society)
– Comprised primarily of Management Engineers, HMSS actually sprung out
of a group of pioneers who met at the annual Mid-Atlantic Health
Congress, usually held in Sin City, er, that is, Atlantic City, New Joisey.
– The photo below shows HMSS founding management engineers in 1965:
- The first HMSS national
convention was held in
Baltimore in 1962, when the
entire membership was 54:
- 26 Full Members
- 8 Associate Members
- 14 Affiliate Members
- 6 Commercial
Members
- Some difference from last

7. Adding an “I”!
• It was not until 1986 that HMSS renamed itself, adding the “I” to
encompass both information systems and telecommunications
professionals, officially changing its name to the Healthcare
Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
• It was billed as “HIMSS of the AHA,” headquartered in Chicago.
• Ironically, in the very next year (1987) HIMSS held its annual
convention in the sin city, Las Vegas, scene of 2012’s caper…
• Check out these facts from this first annual convention officially
entitled “HIMSS” (not HMSS, which had run 14 prior annual gigs,
mostly in Atlantic City and Baltimore):
– 525 people in attendance
– Nearly filling the Riviera Hotel
– 36 vendors/consulting firm booths

8. Early Testimonials
• The May 1987 issue of Bill
Child’s Healthcare
Computing &
Communications featured
HIMSS as its feature story,
and included these
testimonials from HIS
notables of the time:
• Mark Gross of E&Y
• Rich Sneider,
consultant
• Jim Reep, founder of
First Consulting
• Rick Adam of
Baxter/Travenol
• Scot Waldrop, CyCare
• Jay Toole of AA

9. Perspective
• If you’re lucky enough to have conned your CFO into approving
travel to for this year’s HIMSS, keep this fascinating perspective in
mind as you walk among the thousands of vendor booths:
– That hall was empty a few days before and will be empty again
a few days later as it sets up for the next convention.
– Which is about as long as the sales claims & marketing hype
you hear there will last, until you go back to your hospital’s HIS
and reality…

10. Perspective
• If you’re lucky enough to have conned your CFO into approving
travel to for this year’s HIMSS, keep this fascinating perspective
in mind as you walk among the thousands of vendor booths:
– That hall was empty a few days before and will be empty again
a few days later as it sets up for the next convention.
– Which is about as long as the sales claims & marketing hype
you hear there will last, until you go back to your hospital’s
HIS and reality…