The Art of Product Management

As a product manager, I think a lot about how I can better understand my customers. A funny incident made me realize that one can't ever assume to know customers well enough: it's always a work in progress.

During the last week of September, I joined several other colleagues at the annual AHIMA conference in Orlando, Florida. The conference is a gathering of Health Information Management (HIM) professionals. Topics cover transcription, coding, release of information (or as the healthcare industry calls it, simply, 'ROI'), audits, and compliance. My company's booth was organized around our themes of connecting the patient record, EMR enablement, and compliance.

Emily, our Manager of Experiential Marketing, had developed a booth activity around building a bracelet as a metaphor for what we do: link the discrete elements in the physical and digital worlds and create a complete, valuable, patient record. For each bracelet that visitors made, we would donate money to a good cause. To obtain charms needed to build this bracelet, visitors would have to visit various stations and learn about our solutions. I didn't think this was a practical idea because I wasn't sure our customers would want to build bracelets at a conference. I thought an Apple iPad giveaway might have been more appealing.

It turned out--I was totally wrong and our booth visitors LOVED the activity! Emily knew this audience a lot better than I did. We ended up oversubscribed (mobbed?) and many customers told me that this was one of the most active booths at the show. Mission accomplished! Well done Emily and the team!

Ingenix acquires coding company

HISTalk reports that Ingenix is acquiring A-Life Medical. I have speculated on the grand strategy behind Ingenix's acquisition spree (see for example, this, this, this, or this) and it's getting more clear now: Ingenix wants to have a presence in multiple touchpoints in the healthcare IT value chain. They are assembling data collection and analytical components that used together will provide a powerful analytics-driven (outcomes driven?) healthcare delivery model.

This has been a busy week at work with our planning projects in full swing. I'm looking forward to AHIMA later this week and I plan to resuming a more predictable posting schedule after that. Much to report on based on what I've learnt in these past few weeks!

Blumenthal Vs. O'Neil

ONCHIT chief David Blumenthal and former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill debated EMRs and national standards: see related story from Mass Device.

I'm back from several field visits this week to hospitals in North Carolina. I'll summarize observations in a future post; and then from Sept 26 through Sept 29th, I'm back on the road for AHIMA. I look forward to further conversations with healthcare executives and I'll report findings soon thereafter.