Health professions students flooded Carter Hall Wednesday to learn more about new technologies in their field.

Senior health services major Jessica Smith was one of the students who attended the Health Informatics Conference for class.

“I think this [conference] will help me learn more about patient-centered health care along with social media and new technologies in my field,” Smith said.

Presentations delivered by the speakers addressed trends in health information technology, which included patient care, consumer and patient engagement, health information exchange, wearable computing, data analytics and data modeling, as well as topics relevant to the recent Ebola outbreaks.

Several information booths were set up to provide onlookers information about healthcare providers, such as St. Mary’s and Deaconess hospitals, health careers and accreditation at USI. Information on new health care technologies, such as the Telamon Corporation, featuring statwatch–a health solution that provides users with mobile health assessment and biometric screening, was also available.

Speaker Brian Dixon, assistant professor of health informatics at Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis, is involved with the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), which promotes exchanges of health information to improve clinical and population health quality, effectiveness and efficiency.

He has contributed to the development and implementation of health information applications and systems, including tools supporting the standard clinical vocabulary, Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes, LOINC, along with tools for querying large clinical data repositories.

He focused on the best practices that are prevalent in socio-technical systems within healthcare environments and the roles of patients, providers and competitors in health information technology.

“I hope to bring awareness to some of the critical challenges of technology in the health care system, and to share some of the solutions my organization has created in order to better design software for clinicians and health care professionals in the future,” Dixon said.

The Health Informatics Conference featured eight additional speakers who presented on a variety of topics related to health informatics technology, including consumer perspectives on healthcare, healthcare social media and professionalism, managing medications through informatics, ways to keep yourself and the computer from becoming a crowd, patient engagement and remote care in the home and the future of healthcare and what technology can achieve.

Alumna graduate Erin Frankenberger thought the conference greatly benefited healthcare students and gave nurses and health facility administrators contact hours.

“I think the information is especially useful to nurses and med students,” Frankenberger said. “This event provided a chance for students to hear speakers from all over the country talk about hot health care topics.”