HDAA 2023 conference in review

November 6-9, 2023 

Healthcare Data & Analytics Association Annual Conference
Hosted by Children's Hospital Colorado

Here's a quick link to conference recordings, available to all who attended in person or virtually. 
If you attended but the link doesn't work, please email [email protected].

Click here to for a printable version of the 2023 agenda.

Everyone smiles, everyone engages, everyone learns. These people are family.

This is just one of the anonymous comments we received on our HDAA 2023 conference survey. See more below, but it captures perfectly the spirit and vibe of our event and HDAA's approach to healthcare analytics.

HDAA 2023 Sponsors

Was 2023 the year of AI and cloud computing in healthcare analytics? For an answer, look no further than the list of companies that sponsored HDAA's annual conference.

Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Snowflake, Health Catalyst, BigBear.ai, Epic, and CDW Healthcare: all are contributing, financially and intellectually, to our gathering.

We at HDAA take what we think is a unique approach to conference sponsorship. First and foremost, we solicit organizations who advance the healthcare analytics conversation in some important way. There are no trade fairs at a HDAA conference. Instead, sponsors co-present with one of our members, defend posters on a key aspect of our profession, moderate a roundtable discussion.

These eight companies support the HDAA approach and are absolutely essential partners in the rapid maturation of analytics in healthcare. We learn from them; they learn from us. It's a beautiful win-win.

Please thank our sponsors for helping make HDAA 2023 possible.

Conference Summary

Another HDAA conference in the books. And what a conference it was. Kerri Webster, Allison Voorman, and the entire Children's Hospital Colorado Colorado team: THANK YOU! We had 272 attendees in person at Denver, including sponsor representatives, plus 18 more members who attended virtually via Zoom.

It’s always risky to reduce our proceedings to a few paragraphs. Healthcare analytics is an infinitely interesting, ever-changing and complex area for discovery, and our conferences mirror that variety. But let’s give it a try.

To no one’s surprise, artificial intelligence was front and center in our proceedings. Our keynote speaker, Carole Piovesan, co-founder of INQ Consulting, set the stage for a three-day dive into the issues surrounding governance of healthcare AI. A central tenet from Carole's address was the need for transparency in how large-language models actually work: data sources, the key variables, etc.

Carole moderated a follow-up discussion on ethics and AI with panelists Dr. Jon Handler of OSF Healthcare, Sara Deakyne Davies from our hosts Children's Hospital Colorado, Dan Schneider of Northwestern, and Brian Nice from the University of Washington of Public Health. Dan and Brian were among several presenters, including Philip Silberman and Beth Britt, who focused further on those ethical issues. 

Many of those issues are not new: Luke Morris, for one, presented on the work Cedars Sinai has done around inequity and unconscious bias.

Of course, we had just as many presentations that focused on the technical aspects of AI in healthcare. Trey Kell, Nikolay Braykov, Faith Chen, and others presented innovative uses of the technology to solve tricky problems.

Other broad themes were the importance of data governance and literacy, as well as the value of strong partnerships between clinicians and their analytics partners. Thursday morning keynoters Dr. Kevin Carney and Jennifer Roth, Children's Hospital Colorado, outlined several practical lessons to improve that partnership, beginning with the value of embedding analysts in clinical departments.

Our second panel, featuring Rachini Moosavi of UNC Health; Dr. Robert Jarve, Corewell Health; Dr. Nnaemeka Okafor, Memorial Hermann Health System; Patrick Guffey and Emily Reyes, Children's Hospital Colorado; and moderated by Children's Colorado's Kerri Webster, focused on the role of that relationship with data quality and collection.

Jazreel Cheung reviewed the comprehensive literacy program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Kenzie Jacobs and Jan Riggins covered the ARC analytics training program at Children's Hospital Colorado; Sarah Vande Loo and the Mayo Clinic team taught us how to build an effective data library; Troy Heninger on data governance at St. Luke's Health System.

New to us this year: Josh Roberts and The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) generated great interest in their proposed infrastructure for sharing clinical data across research institutions.

And of course, HDAA 2023 would not be complete without the array of innovative projects our members create: a population health-centered data model from Martha Sylvia and Dr. Jarve; the data behind Seattle Children's effort to reduce carbon emissions from Suzanne Spencer; supply chain as a service from Brian Pringle of Mayo.

HDAA 2023 Volunteers of the Year

Congratulations to Peter Ivers of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Wendy Soethe, Pivot Point Consulting, the 2023 recipients of our Susan McFarland Volunteer of the Year award.

Pete leads our Epic special interest group and is a charter member of HDAA's community advisory council. His work with the Epic SIG is a wonderful example of HDAA's commitment to active and engaged discussion on topics of importance. The Epic SIG meets monthly and covers a wide range of topics involving Epic and analytics.

Especially noteworthy: Pete persuaded representatives from both Epic and Microsoft to speak with the group during 2023. HDAA is a vendor-agnostic organization, but we all know that our vendors are critical partners in the maturation of healthcare analytics. Pete found a way to include Epic and Microsoft in our conversations to the benefit of all parties. Epic was so intrigued by the experience that it helped sponsor HDAA 2023 and sent two representatives to Denver.

Wendy has been deeply involved with HDAA since she spearheaded our 2018 conference in Seattle while she was at Seattle Children's Hospital. In the past two years, she's led the effort to recruit sponsors for our conferences. Sponsor revenue funds HDAA operations throughout the year -- our town halls, SIGs, even our website would not be possible without the financial support of our conference sponsors.

Wendy worked tirelessly in 2023 to find sponsors committed to HDAA's mission and eager to contribute our body of knowledge.

Thank you, Pete and Wendy, for all you to do make HDAA the robust organization it has become.

HDAA 2023 Post-conference survey

Each year, we ask conference attendees to complete a survey. This year, 63 of our 272 in-person attendees completed the survey, a remarkable return rate of nearly 23%. Thanks to all who did respond. 

A full 95% of attendees would definitely or likely recommend a HDAA conference to their colleagues. Nearly 75% expect to attend again in 2024. Nearly 58% were attending a HDAA conference for the first time

Click here (members only) for a full accounting of the survey, including attendees' favorite presentations and posters, suggestions for improvement, and more.

A few of our favorite comments:

This is the best conference to attend. Unlike other conferences where you are in a sea of vendors, this conference focuses on pragmatic and practical aspects of healthcare data & analytics and the connections formed with other systems is incredible.

Loved the conference - really great presentations- a few of the presentations in the Program/Project Management were far more technical than I was expecting- Wish the slides were available immediately after the conference concluded.

Amazing conference, very relevant sessions on AI, governance; Content is very applied, but had right level of rigor, enjoyed there was a mix of adult and peds hospitals, minimal vendor presence. Maybe invite more payers / payviders?

I honestly felt that I have found "the" conference I need to attend yearly. I've been impressed with your calls and the conference was great! Looking forward to attending next year.

I just want to say WOW! What an amazing experience! This was my first HDAA conference (and my first conference in general) so the bar is set very high for the future. The content was top-notch and relevant to my work, and I was very impressed with how organized the entire event was. I also really appreciated that the food was delicious and that there were plenty of vegetarian options... Thank you to everyone who helped organize this wonderful event!