The American College of Clinical Engineering will cohost several sessions at the upcoming HIMSS 2016 annual conference, to be held February 29 to March 4, 2016, in Las Vegas. A selected list of session topics follows. For more information on all ACCE-sponsored sessions, visit the ACCE website.

Pre-conference symposia:
Health IT Safety Symposium (separate registration required)
Health IT Safety Culture: Working Together to Improve Patient Care
Monday, February 29, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sands Expo & Convention Center
This symposium educates you on strategies, which improve health IT safety and quality of patient care. Providers and health IT developers share their experiences and work together to develop tools, which improve clinical decision support, health IT safety culture, and safety.

Pre-conference symposia:
Cybersecurity Symposium (separate registration required)
Cybersecurity: Time to Improve Your Posture
Monday, February 29, 8:15 AM – 4:30 PM
Sands Expo & Convention Center, Room# Lando 4205
Hospitals, payers, and business associates are increasingly leveraging the internet, medical and mobile devices in order to improve care, lower costs, and retain competitive advantage. With this shift to digital comes increased risk to protected health information (PHI). Healthcare organizations need an improved security posture to avoid compromise and breach. This symposium will help guide your information security posture to realign and defend against emerging cyber threats.

ACCE Education Session # 20:
Medical Device Patching—Factors for Strategy and Execution

Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Sands Expo & Convention Center, Room Delfino 4102
This session will begin to break down the challenges of medical device patching from a regulatory, policy, and operational perspective. By outlining a tiered approach, this session will walk through the key elements of a medical device patch management program including C-suite level strategy, lifecycle and change management, automation, and execution. Participants will also gain an understanding of the limitations of a patch management program and the mitigating controls that should be considered. Speakers include Axel Wirth, national healthcare solutions architect for Symantec, and Ron Mehring, vice president of technology and security for Texas Health Resources.