Health IT · McCormick Place, Chicago, IL · Apr 5-8, 2027
HIMSS27lead capture
The honest read on HIMSS27: what the organizer scanner really costs, what the badge encodes, and whether the venue WiFi holds up. Tendro is a lead capture app: your booth team scans badges and business cards with their phones, and it is $499 flat for the whole team at one event. One $499 fee covers every phone on your booth staff, instead of renting scanners per device.
Test the free desk trial: point a phone at last year's badges and a stack of business cards and judge the enrichment yourself. No credit card.
HIMSS27 fact sheet
Organizer scanner rental
$475 to $995
per device or package, 2026 CompuLEAD order form
Free WiFi, not in booths
768 Kbps
McCormick Place: meeting rooms, public space and hall hotspots only
Show days · order clock
Apr 5-8, 2027
McCormick Place, Chicago, IL. Last edition's rates stepped up by order date.
Tendro (our line in this table)
$499 flat
whole booth team, one event, any badge from their phones
The basics
HIMSS27 at a glance
Health IT vendors sell to hospital and health-system buyers here: HIMSS26 counted 24,000 registrations and 900+ exhibiting companies.
| Show dates | April 5-8, 2027 (conference and exhibition April 6-8) |
| Venue | McCormick Place, Chicago, IL |
| Lead retrieval | Organized by HIMSS and Informa Markets. Registration and lead retrieval by CompuSystems (CompuLEAD). |
| Who exhibits | Health IT |
The scanner cost
What does lead retrieval cost at HIMSS27?
The 2026 CompuLEAD order form ran $475 to $995 per device or package. The next edition's form typically drops with the exhibitor service kit.
Those are the 2026 numbers, so read them as the shape, not today's quote. The next edition's form typically arrives with the exhibitor service kit and the tiers tend to move a little.
| Device (2026 form) | Advance | Standard | Onsite |
|---|---|---|---|
| App, three user activations | $475 | $515 | $545 |
| App package, three activations with custom qualifiers and content delivery | $580 | $615 | $645 |
| Tablet rental | $490 | $525 | $555 |
| Tablet package with delivery, setup and one app activation | $780 | $840 | $905 |
| Self-service kiosk | $995 | $995 | $995 |
| App, unlimited user activations | $2,800 | $2,800 | $2,800 |
The price steps up as the show nears: advance, then standard, then onsite. The 2026 calendar cutoffs do not carry over, so treat the current service kit as the only source for real deadline dates. Note the per-device line: every extra scanner is another rental.
The HIMSS26 CompuLEAD pricing catalog is public, linked from the HIMSS exhibitor knowledge hub. The HIMSS27 catalog is not published yet; orders go through compusystems.com/order with the show code. Source.
The badge
What does the HIMSS27 badge actually encode?
The HIMSS badge QR is read by CompuLEAD, which pulls the full registration record and stores only partial data until it gets a connection.
That ID is a license plate. It means nothing without the CompuSystems database behind it, so the organizer's own scanner is the only device that resolves the encoded ID, while Tendro captures the same lead by reading the printed face and enriching the rest.
No universal app, Tendro included, decodes the organizer's encoded badge ID; what Tendro reads is the printed face, the name, title, and company, and enrichment fills the verified email and firmographics the badge leaves off. Same for business cards and QR codes.
So the honest limit carries its own fix: without the organizer's licensed access (the rented scanner or a paid event API) no app resolves the encoded ID, and OCR plus enrichment returns the named, verified contact without waiting on the rental. The universal badge scanner explainer walks through how.
One more thing worth checking: exhibitor contracts vary on third-party capture policies, so read yours before the show.
The WiFi
Does the WiFi hold up at McCormick Place?
McCormick Place's own exhibitor WiFi guidance limits complimentary 768 Kbps WiFi to meeting rooms, public spaces and a few hall hotspots; booths need a paid line.
McCormick Place offers complimentary WiFi at 768 Kbps in meeting rooms and public spaces, plus the permanent food-pod areas and one hotspot per exhibit hall, and says access can be sporadic. It is not booth coverage, and an organizer WiFi buyout can change the terms, so booths that need a connection order paid service. Its wireless internet page has the details.
McCormick Place notes exceptions when a show organizer buys out the WiFi; no HIMSS27 buyout has been published.
It gets worse under load. Show-floor WiFi is half-duplex, and per Cisco's high-density WiFi design guidance, a single access point degrades past roughly 25 clients per radio. The busiest hour on the floor is the hour the signal is thinnest.
Tendro captures to the phone first. Every scan queues locally with its real timestamp and syncs in order when the connection returns, so a soft WiFi bar never costs you a lead. The offline capture write-up covers how the queue behaves when the venue drops.
The alternative
What is the $499-per-event alternative?
Tendro is $499 per event with unlimited team members, never per device. A five-person booth pays one flat fee, not five rentals.
HIMSS27 moves back to McCormick Place after a year at The Venetian, and the move changes how its badge behaves on the floor. CompuSystems' own CompuLEAD guide says the app reads the badge QR and pulls the attendee's full registration record, but with no WiFi or internet connection only partial data is stored until a connection occurs. McCormick Place scopes its complimentary 768 Kbps WiFi to meeting rooms and public spaces, so a phone leaning on venue WiFi on the exhibit floor may hold only the partial record until it reconnects. The latest public price sheet is the HIMSS26 CompuLEAD catalog, three columns stepping on January 5 and January 21, 2026: the app with three user activations was $475, $515, then $545, every extra activation $145, and an unlimited-user app license a flat $2,800. HIMSS says its HIMSS26 exhibitors averaged about 170 leads per company. Tendro is $499 flat with unlimited team members, and it works offline.
The desk trial
How do you test it before HIMSS27?
Run the free desk test before HIMSS27: scan old badges and business cards, judge the enrichment, then decide.
The free trial is the scan-and-enrichment desk test. Point a phone at last year's badges and a stack of business cards, watch what Tendro reads and enriches, and grade the data before HIMSS27 opens.
We do not publish a blanket enrichment match rate. Industrial badges enrich differently than SaaS ones, which is exactly why the desk test exists: run it on your own badge stack.
The free trial covers capture and enrichment; CRM sync switches on with your first paid event, so you test field mapping against a real show, not a sandbox. The desk test costs a lunch break and answers the enrichment question before any show is on the line.
Straight answers
HIMSS27 lead capture, in brief
What does lead retrieval cost at HIMSS27?
The 2026 CompuLEAD order form ran $475 to $995 per device or package. The next edition's form typically drops with the exhibitor service kit.
What does the HIMSS27 badge actually encode?
The HIMSS badge QR is read by CompuLEAD, which pulls the full registration record and stores only partial data until it gets a connection.
Does the WiFi hold up at McCormick Place?
McCormick Place's own exhibitor WiFi guidance limits complimentary 768 Kbps WiFi to meeting rooms, public spaces and a few hall hotspots; booths need a paid line.
What is the $499-per-event alternative?
Tendro is $499 per event with unlimited team members, never per device. A five-person booth pays one flat fee, not five rentals.
How do you test it before HIMSS27?
Run the free desk test before HIMSS27: scan old badges and business cards, judge the enrichment, then decide.
Before HIMSS27
Capture the whole booth for $499.
One app. Every event. Never per device.