HIMSS’s Hal Wolf on the Organization’s Growth and Trajectory

What is the relationship between HIMSS and Informa now?

HIMSS is a global non-profit organization; under that umbrella, we do events, we do global analytics services, we have 120,000-plus members, and a global reach with offices around the world, and a media division. So we have multiple businesses that operate under that non-profit umbrella, which are designed to help drive the global healthcare IT ecosystem, and to help people. We have a policy shop that works on policy in the US, the EU, and the world. And specifically around digital health, governments, ministries of health, individual hospitals and clinics—everyone is looking to HIMSS for that level of guidance and our ability to bring together transformative guidance.

And so the global conference itself, which is a single event, that conference was sold to Informa Markets, which is a part of the Informa organization, which is the world’s largest event operator. For years, HIMSS had operated the event; it’s a heavy lift. And so by selling the global conference, which we were excited to do if we found the right partner—and we were excited by the possibility if we could find the right partner—we found that partner in Informa. And that was in August of 2023. In August of 2023, we sold the global conference to Informa. It’s still the HIMSS Global Conference: we’re accountable for content. But they take on all the operational responsibilities, so we can focus on membership, content, etc. We

You and your colleagues at HIMSS are still developing the content of sessions?

We work together on it. A number of people who worked for HIMSS now work for Informa.

Can you give me numbers on staff?

About 30 people migrated from HIMSS to Informa.

And what is the HIMSS staff size right now?

We’re at around 250.

Are you still technically headquartered in Chicago?

We’re technically headquartered in Rotterdam, and have our North American headquarters in Chicago. We had announced that at HIMSS23, and I announced it from the stage, that we were moving the global headquarters to Rotterdam; and we’re still in the process of setting that up. And Chicago is the home of North American HIMSS. And I’m actually in Denver. I never moved to Chicago.

What is going to be different at the conference this year?

Several things. First of all, from an experience standpoint, you’re going to see a lot of the stagnant posters and billboards we used to provide, replaced with digital frames. There will be moving announcements for sessions, etc. Think of it as a world that is going to be informing you more. There’s a new mobile app, which will give people better connectivity. There’s a new matching capability, which is really exciting for me. If you’re on the provider side, you can check into the hosted buyer program. It will tell you which vendors have resources you’re interested in, and will connect you with them. We’ve also been able to build up our VentureConnect program for startups. And the advanced leadership programming has been expanded. We had over 400 people last year, and the demand is going through the roof. So we’ve been working with Informa to improve the experience and make it more personalized.

How do you view HLTH/ViVE?

It’s a really good question; I’m not going to be able to give you a clean answer. We all do different things. HIMSS is a global non-profit; people who come to HIMSS are interested in our education. Do they have unique things? They do some interesting things, especially around start-ups. But in the last three years, HIMSS has been coming back very, very strong, following the pandemic. We went from about 18,000 to 20 to 30 last year, and we’ll exceed that this year. So from all our indications, regardless of who else is putting on events, and there are many, many organizations putting on events, we’re seeing our conference coming back very strongly.

There are a lot of new titles emerging now in patient care organizations—chief transformation officer, chief digital officer, chief innovation officer, chief analytics officer, etc. Does that development in the industry shift how you think about CIOs and other senior health IT leaders?

Let me start with this: HIMSS is not an association; and that is really critical. It is a society. And the reason the word “society” was picked a long time ago—an association is an organization of persons having a common interest, whereas a society is an organization with common working focus. CHIME (the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives) has always been an association. And we had a partnership with CHIME at one point. HIMSS has grown like crazy; we added 18,000 new members in the last year. There’s been an explosion in diversity in titles. As a society, we weave together—whether you call it a quilt or blanket—a range of professionals from different backgrounds. People are joining HIMSS by the thousands, because you can join a society where you have people who are interfacing across so many titles and responsibilities, focusing on digital health solutions, in order to redesign their organizations. And this is literally the one place where you can go, where there are people just like you, as well as people interfacing with you in your space.

And what is your membership level now?

We’re just over 125,000 now. And I began just a little over six years ago. I came off the board and came into HIMSS in the CEO role. At that time, we had 77,000-78,000 members. We started in 1961. We were about 82,000-83,000 leading into the pandemic. And then we exploded, especially during the pandemic. Why? You may recall that the world looked up and said, you know, this digital health thing may mean something. And where do we do to figure out how to implement this, to find the analytic tools? So HIMSS has grown so dramatically in the last three years. Because of the explosion in digital health, we’ve become that home because we are a society. And to grow up beyond 125,000 is amazing, but it’s a reflection of what we offer. And we’re really proud of that.

What do you see as your biggest challenges going forward as an organization, and how will you overcome them?

Right now, the biggest challenge is actually demand. We’re a bit of a victim of our own success, in that the demand for HIMSS services is growing around the globe. So as we’ve been going through this budget process, the challenge is how much we can do, and what we prioritize. Given all the requests that we’re receiving, that’s a challenge.

And what are your top priorities as CEO?

Continuing to provide membership value at an individual level, and scaling the demand on our analytics business, that’s our number-one challenge, in terms of the pure delivery. A person joins the society for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned. And keeping them engaged with the services and in our 59 chapters globally and multiple communities; HIMSS is truly a membership organization that’s bottom-up. And the scalable piece we’re always working on is the analytics.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I would just reiterate on the Informa piece, that we’re thrilled about it. We love it. Informa’s been amazing; they’ve lived up to everything they said they would do to support the conference and members. We’re thrilled with the panels and speakers we’ll have at HIMSS24. Everything from ministers of health to Nick Saban, the former head football coach at the University of Alamba. He’s the closing speaker at HIMSS24.