CSI has a long history of investing in various trade shows with the intent to connect with customers and industry leaders. Events like HIMSS25 and ViVE provided opportunities to network, discover new technologies, and showcase products and services. This year’s HIMSS event, held March 3rd – 6th in Las Vegas, was fairly similar to past years…with one exception: our approach to the show. CSI attended the show by shifting to a learning approach by seeking out client insights, capturing common challenges, and truly understanding if and how new technologies are addressing those challenges. A month after the event, it seemed appropriate to share some of those approaches and lessons learned from our clients and partners.
The first question many folks asked was, “Why is CSI not exhibiting this year?” While many service and technology firms use trade shows like HIMSS to showcase their capabilities and to drive business and sales, we’ve found the benefits to be minimal. The first thing to consider, with over 950 exhibitors showcasing their technologies and/or services, is how do you not get lost in the crowd. There is no doubt that the values of exhibiting can draw in potential new business and help with branding, but when the attendees go home…what did they gain, and did they remember you? CSI took advantage of the event to bring customers together, sit down and listen, and meet with industry-leading partners to learn and help us better meet the demands of our clients.
One opportunity to really spend time with clients and colleagues was at the various Regional HIMSS events. CSI was excited and honored at the opportunity to sponsor and host several events, including the Mid-Atlantic Chapters Happy Hour and the joint NY, NJ, PA, and DE chapters luncheon. Having a table at these events provides a better venue and opportunity to connect with both current and potential clients. The team learned and identified several common operational challenges along with ongoing financial pressures and staffing shortages. The team heard how the big buzzword of “AI” is impacting day-to-day and improving operations but also clinician satisfaction.
Taylor Clark, CSI Vice President of Strategic Accounts, shared, “The takeaway from HIMSS this year was that our clients stated that they are looking for us to be an innovative partner who isn’t just focused on the onesie-twosie placements. They are looking for CSI to be strategic in their offerings and how to improve efficiencies and workflows while helping them keep costs down and maximize their ROI. Getting creative, innovative, and finding meaningful solutions is what will continue to set CSI apart.”
Another shift from exhibiting was to take advantage of vendors and partners being available to sit down and share their areas of focus on how they are aligning with customer demands. One such example was CSI had the opportunity to sit down with Epic leadership and learn what are some extents of client challenges that we can help them with. We learned that areas around Patient Access, CRM, and AI-enhanced functionality are in demand. From there, the team took full advantage of Epic’s offer to meet with various Epic experts for demos and discussions to better help us create customized support models in these areas with our customers.
Other partner meetings provided education and further insight into AI, automation capabilities, as well as cloud hosting and data management. With CSI’s newly acquired MedSys Group executives in attendance, the joint team was able to meet with Oracle to better understand how we can better help with customer demands and needs in managed services. Walking the show floor and meeting and greeting colleagues and friends provided insights into home health, wearable technologies, and security. Keynote speakers and various industry expert panels all provided great information to help CSI better align our future catalog of services with our customer needs.
KLAS Research is another investment that CSI believes drives performance improvement to better serve our clients. The team had an opportunity to sit down with KLAS to better understand market demands based on KLAS findings. We learned of several new areas that are driving EHR capabilities and addressing the needs of all organizations, regardless of size, revenue, or location. CSI believes in creating highly customized solutions, and KLAS helps with steering the deliverables and successes of those projects in the right direction.
Celebration of success is always a wonderful reason to pull folks together at HIMSS, along with partners and clients. CSI kicked off the week by accepting recognition for Best in KLAS for Technical Services at the KLAS-sponsored award show. The networking event provided an opportunity for over 40 top-rated technology and service firms to share their successes while also being recognized as industry leaders. CSI was honored and excited to have the team there to be recognized for their efforts.
Thanking our customers for their long-term loyalty and having trust in CSI’s team and leadership has always been a part of these events. Through scheduled meetings, coffee meetings, and shared meals, the CSI team benefited from time with clients to hear what their 2025 initiatives are and what they are seeing and hearing at the show and provide a real opportunity for continued partnership. Hearing of their success and how those were achieved provides an opportunity to share those benefits with other organizations as well. Not to mention, just a few weeks after HIMSS25, tying those meeting messages together to identify shared challenges, variations of project approaches, and outcomes ended up being yet another benefit of the show.
After four days in Vegas we all walked away with some great ideas, fun memories, and likely a bit of fatigue from literally walking 10+ miles a day. The good news is the common themes across our customers continue to be in digital health transformation planning with integration efforts to help with the end-user experience and patient care. Artificial intelligence is starting to take shape into actionable system functionality. As this continues, the need will be for integrated workflows, work queue development, end-user training, and system build maintenance to maximize operational improvements.
About the Author
Douglas Herr is the Senior Vice President of Client Services and Strategy at CSI. Doug draws on 25 years of experience in Healthcare IT with expertise in governance planning, operational staffing models, training program development, and EHR implementations. Across both large healthcare systems and Ambulatory facilities, Doug has worked closely with clients to ensure their success with a variety of project efforts from enterprise-wide implementations, ongoing optimization initiatives, training design needs, and Managed Services support models.
