This week I’ve been in Washington DC at the World Health Care Congress and I’ve talked to a lot of people–some on and some off the record. Much of that of course has been available at WorldHealthCareBlog, and some smattering of that has been seen over here at THCB from time to time. But all engrossing stuff—especially getting up close and personal with Jack Wennberg a couple of times.

I then moved up to Boston where I’ve been listening to some smart people and talking with various technology companies. You’ll hear much more about that in the coming days, including a very interesting interview with Joseph Kvedar at the Center for Connected Health at Partners. That’ll be a podcast when the upload cooperates.

I’ve also attended not one, not two, but three talks by Jonathan Cohn about his new book Sick.
He randomly was in California, DC, and then Boston the same days I was,
and we got to have breakfast, dinner and lunch together on three
separate days. And I interviewed him for a video-podcast which
hopefully will be available soon. And to meet his lovely wife Amy (a
too clever by half operations research professor).  I also met Ezra
Klein, Kate Steadman and another bunch of too clever by 3/4s young
writers who made me and my buddy Matt Quinn feel old and dumb. Matt by
the way is only 34! He was very happy though to meet other people who
also love The Wire!

And thanks to Maggi Cary for putting on the best diner party I’ve  been to in years.

But perhaps the most interesting feature has been divorced and with
the vast number of (Ed: blame Naturally speaking for that one!) dogs that seem to be running around the health care world in Beantown.
So in their honor first here’s the world most special dog, Charley, who
I’ve been missing walking while I’ve been gone.

And
surely I’ve been missing my preventative care—that there’s been so much
discussion about at the world health care conference—by not walking
with him!

This is Manny and Chip, the dogs at Enhanced Medical Devices.
The talented team there has some really neat stuff which extracts
really useful information from clinical texts—yeah I know I’m biased,
as I’m working with them. I’m not sure how much Manny and Chip add to
the coding effort though.

Finally I got to call in on the team at Sermo. When their job ads say “must love dogs”, they ain’t kidding. Their office has packs of them charging around! They
even have a conference room with a doggie door in it. I met their
engineering team and politely asked them to defect to Typepad’s maker
Six Apart so that my blog readers could get their community features. I
guess that’s a little wishful thinking. They are on a roll. I told you
that they’ve signed up 10,000 docs now. Meanwhile for every doc who
signs up on their community they put a candle in this net.I
hope none of the dogs are standing around under it when it breaks!
(Probably be a good idea if CEO Daniel Palestrant wasn’t under it
either!)

He’ll be at the Health2.0 Conference, as will Marlene Beggelman, CEO of Enhanced Medical Devices too.

Next week I’m at the Health Care Blogging Summit in Vegas and then on Tuesday keynoting at the Focal Point, the Foresight Healthcare Customer Conference in Carefree, Arizona. At some point I’ll go home for a rest!