CHIME Launches Social Platform

Since launching its new myCHIME social collaboration platform last October, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) says it has changed the ways it communicates with its members and is blazing new trails in the areas of health care-community networking, collaboration, and education. The announcement from the platform's architect, Next Wave Connect, comes less than a week before the opening of HIMSS 2015 in Chicago. Each year, HIMSS represents one of the most extensive opportunities for in-person collaboration in the HIT industry.

As the provider of the premier social-collaboration platform designed by health care professionals for health care professionals, Next Wave Connect maintains and continues to enhance the community collaboration platform for CHIME and its members. Using myCHIME, CHIME members are able to interact with each other as well as the broader health care community through Next Wave Connect.

"The myCHIME platform is the next-generation of online communication for CHIME—the vehicle on which 100% of our members engage with us, and, more importantly, engage with one another," says Russell Branzell, FCHIME, CHCIO, CEO and president of CHIME. "As a result of collaboration via myCHIME, issues can be successfully addressed in a matter of weeks, not months; days, not weeks; and minutes, not days."

According to Branzell, myCHIME allows members to learn and collaborate about anything and everything that affects them as CIOs, including such subjects of immediate impact as meaningful use stage 3, federal government policies and legislation, Washington D.C. trends, and other issues driven by the evolution of health care reform.

"Because myCHIME enables up-to-the-minute, secure, peer-to-peer communication, member CIOs can make informed, quality decisions that shape their organizations for the future of health care," says Jim Jacobs, CEO of Next Wave Connect. "What makes Next Wave Connect unique, especially in the case of myCHIME, is the ability to facilitate quick but meaningful collaboration between users. To do that, technology alone is not enough: you need to be at the intersection of platform and people. That's what makes the difference for CHIME and their members."

Besides providing CIOs access to quick information, the platform also offers CHIME members the following:

• a safe and secure virtual space where members can collaborate, reach broader audiences, establish thought-leadership, and shape conversations about the most pressing issues in health care;

• a means of providing members "heads-up" notices of breaking industry issues, including federal legislation;

• guidance for CIOs on how best to communicate with industry and government influencers;

• information on how to help health-system employees understand and process new industry rules and requirements; and

• solutions and other resources that help health systems respond more proactively—and less reactively—to important industry changes.

"By giving our members increased visibility to nearly real-time market intelligence and visibility to issues, myCHIME helps members by reducing or preventing what I call 'days of pain'," says Branzell. "Today, myCHIME is woven into the natural workflow of our members' lives. Wherever they are, it is."

Source: Next Wave Connect