In 2017 NCQA hosted its first Digital Quality Summit, a unique (and niche) conference that focused on issues of implementing digital quality measures. Participants at that first summit comprised a handful of interested health IT wonks and others deep in the weeds of the subject.

But to our surprise, the 2018 audience was a larger, more diverse gathering of tech gurus, health care professionals and policy experts—and tickets sold out.

On July 16–18, we’ll be in Boston, Massachusetts, for the 2019 Digital Quality Summit, which has become the premiere health IT conference of the year.

We spoke with Dr. Michael Barr, Executive Vice President with the Quality Measures and Research Group at NCQA, to get his thoughts and ideas about this year’s participants. “This is a community. A place for people interested in quality, digital measures, standards, new [coding] languages… anyone who wants to talk about and, more important, to work on these issues.”

Not Your Average Health Care Conference

If you’ve ever been to any kind of convention or conference, you might be expecting a few speakers. Perhaps some breakout sessions to hear more speakers. That’s not the Digital Quality Summit! Participants can pursue the tracks that interest them. They’ll be presented with real-world issues that are relevant in the digital health space, and will engage in robust discussion and problem-solving to develop working measures and other solutions. In other words, this conference leaves “ordinary” in the dust.

Ben Hamlin, Lead Researcher for Digital Measures and Health IT at NCQA, describes the summit’s benefits to participants who aren’t (necessarily) data scientists or policy experts. “It’s important for anyone who wants to understand data quality from any angle and any aspect. I think is important, because [quality] is one of those things that’s holding back instant operation measures and how we access the quality data we want to use.”

Be part of this year’s experience. We expect tickets to sell out before this event. Check out our podcast and register today for the 2019 Digital Quality Summit!