What would we have done during this pandemic if it wasn't for webcams? Whether enabling needed telehealth consults or connecting family members across socially-distanced holiday celebrations, Zoom and the other online video platforms have been essential communication tools these past nine months.

They've have also been instrumental in helping us produce of dozens of monthly interviews and feature videos this past year – as seen on HIMSS TV and at Healthcare IT News and other HIMSS Media brands. Here are the 10 most-watched HIMSS TV videos of 2020.

Traveling the last mile of the long, bumpy road to interoperability. Despite decades of effort and big strides in digital transformation across the ecosystem, there's still a frustrating fact to grapple with, as this Deep Dive feature shows: "The free-flow of data across organizations has been a persistent challenge for the healthcare industry." New rules from ONC and CMS may move the needle substantially, even if their compliance timeline has been pushed back because of the COVID-19 crisis – which itself is an object lesson in the need for seamless and widespread interoperability.

How tech is guiding coronavirus response worldwide. Just a week after most lockdowns and quarantines took effect in March, we offered this in-depth look at how an array or connected health tools – many of which had long shown promise but were underused – were being marshalled to respond to COVID-19. Whether AI-powered chatbots or telehealth and remote monitoring, this unprecedented health crisis would require technology ingenuity to manage.

Innovative digital tools may be a silver lining to COVID-19. As these new virtual care tools and digital diagnostics were rolled out and scaled up at an unprecedented clip, one hope was that, once battle-tested in the thick of this public health emergency, many of them would continue to be in common use, perhaps even the standard of care, once this storm had passed.

Preparing for the inevitable next wave of COVID-19. Still, there's a long way yet to go. The second wave was predicted in the summer, and now that second wave is here. This video offered an international perspective on the promise and potential for those digital tools to offer a concerted and coordinated response to the novel coronavirus.

MIT creates challenge to "hack" COVID-19. Back in the U.S., meanwhile, the innovative thinkers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were putting their heads together for new and creative approaches to harnessing computing power for pandemic response. The insights and tools that have emerged from some of these hackathons have already proven useful.

Mobile patient engagement technology saves clinic $1.8M. In this video case study, we described how the Houston ENT & Allergy Clinic significantly boosted its referral conversion by 35% by tackling patient no-shows – gaining an extra $500,000 in annual revenue. "In today’s environment, everyone is running all types of analytic reports about revenue," said the provider's director of health information management. "One underutilized and forgotten report for executives are the no-show reports. A lot of operations executives somehow miss this very important matrix."

The loneliness of the long-distance COVID-19 survivor. Our former HIMSS Media colleague Frank Cutitta was hospitalized at Mass General this past March with a severe case of COVID-19 – and it was 100 days before he finally returned home from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. In this interview, Cutitta describes what his long patient experience taught him – and discusses the loneliness and disconnection that characterized of his long inpatient stay.

Chatbots' role in fight against coronavirus. With patients nationwide hunkering down at home this spring, chatbots were increasingly used as a complement to more robust telehealth deployments – offering hospitals and health systems an easier and more intuitive way to communicate with remote patients and relay useful information.

Breaking down barriers to care traced to social determinants of health. Perhaps 80% of health outcomes are due to factors outside a clinical setting. In this Deep Dive, we take a closer look at social factors such as behavioral health, education, economic wellbeing, food security and more – and show how technology can be deployed to connect health providers with community organizations to boost population health.

Population health: How tech can assist at-risk patients. In the premier episode of The Alessi Agenda, HIMSS Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Charles Alessi speaks with Kevin Fenton, director of public health and wellbeing at Southwark in the U.K. They discuss emerging new technologies that can help healthcare organizations optimize their existing IT infrastructure, while also evolving to serve the patients who need them most.

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.