Preparing for the unSUMMIT (#unSUM11)

I’m sitting in a hotel bar in Louisville, Kentucky having a salad as I prepare to register for the unSUMMIT. This is the second year in a row I’ve made the trek to the unSUMMIT. I felt that the experience I had last year was definitely worth a second look.

From the unSUMMIT website:

Conventional summits deliver a something-for-everyone survey of the landscape with little or no depth on any given topic. This warp-speed flight provides only a 30,000-foot view of the terrain below. Nurses, pharmacists, and IT professionals return to the trenches of their own hospitals no better equipped to dig in and implement change.

The unSUMMIT is different. It delivers a steadfast focus on barcode point-of-care technology. Attendees are outfitted with practical tools, insight, and inspiration for leading their institutions to carefully select, implement, and harness the quality-improvement power of BPOC systems.

Truly an unconventional convention, The unSUMMIT is designed to get you out of the clouds and into the weeds, where the union of technology and practice can be more easily realized through the shared expertise of your experienced colleagues.

I think most people believe that the unSUMMIT is nothing more than a bunch of people sitting around talking about BCMA, but it actually goes beyond that. Last year I heard presentations on not only bar-coding medications, but integrations of smartpumps into eMARs, the use of RFID tags, how to conduct observational studies and so on.

This year looks to provide a similarly broad scope of information. While reviewing the list of presentations I saw topics on mobile technology, accountability, technology roadmapping, workflow design and of course a lot of stuff on bar-coding medications.

The unSUMMIT begins officially tomorrow morning. I will be presenting on Thursday, April 28 at 2:00pm. I haven’t decided if I’m going to post the presentation here or not. I’ll let you know.

If you’d like to know what’s going on during the conference you can follow the Twitter stream at #unSUM11.