Next week the Panasonic healthcare team will be heading to Hollywood, Florida to join decision makers from major healthcare organizations, large hospitals, home health agencies, long term healthcare centers, and Veterans Affairs facilities, for the 2012 Healthcare Technology Symposium. For the past 6 years, Panasonic has hosted this event to bring healthcare professionals together in a collaborative forum to share best practices, insights and challenges. Each year we look forward to hearing insights from IT thought-leaders, analysts, media and professionals in the field over a two-day period. At this year’s Healthcare Technology Symposium, the theme of presentations and panels is two-fold as we hope to discuss both the current and the future market of HIT.

Edna Boone, HIMSS’ Senior Director of Mobile Initiatives and Brian Ahier, HIT thought leader and journalist, will lead presentations on the current healthcare IT market. Edna will tackle issues such as consumerization of HIT, trends like BYOD and disclose results of the recent mHIMSS mobility survey. Brian’s presentation will be focused on Stage 2 of Meaningful Use and will probe the issue of IT Infrastructure for Accountable Care.

At the other end of the spectrum, Judy Hanover, IDC Health Insights, and Ian Morrison, Author and Futurist, will share their musings on the future for HIT. In her presentation Judy will highlight mega-trends behind connected healthcare and connected hospitals. During Ian’s session, he will explain his forecast which highlights the impact of HIT on the future of medical services.

The Healthcare Technology Symposium will also include a meeting with Rance Poehler, president of Panasonic’s B2B-focused solutions company who lead a session designed to allow customers to provide input on current and future Panasonic products. At Panasonic, we embrace customer feedback and consider these sessions a critical part of our product development process.

Ultimately with this Symposium, we hope to provide healthcare professionals with a forum to discuss opportunities and challenges that will allow all of us to collaborate on technology solutions and share ideas that will foster innovation in healthcare, today and in the future.

For more information about the event, or Panasonic’s healthcare solutions, please visit our website.

If you’re unable to attend this year’s event, we’d still love to hear your feedback, whether it is related specifically to Panasonic’s line of healthcare products or the general HIT market landscape.