Nashville Technology Council

Nashville Tech Story (3/23/10)

NASHVILLE: NOW HIRING

The Nashville Technology Council today announced the release of its Q1 2010 Technology Hiring Trends Report.  After extensive research, the report reveals over 420 technical jobs available in the Middle Tennessee area.  The report was generated from public job postings from large job portals (i.e. CareerBuilder, Monster, etc.), specialty technology sites (i.e. Dice) and local employer sites.

The highest number of openings came from enterprise health care technology companies: Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Health Care Management Systems (HMS), and Community Health Systems (CHS).   In addition, other local industry heavyweights like music, publishing, manufacturing, and transactions continue to post job openings in technology.

The most prevalent technology positions are in Management.  Management is followed by Analyst, Developers, and Network Engineers.  In addition to job openings, the report also illustrates programming languages that are most needed in the today’s technology industry.  .Net, and Java are in highest demand for potential employees, as well as SQL database positions.

“Technology is revolutionizing industries in healthcare, digital content, publishing, and transactions,” said J. Tod Fetherling, President/CEO of Nashville Technology Council. “Nashville’s creative and educational communities are being relied on to assist in transforming music, healthcare, and transactional industries.  This will create exciting new opportunities for employment for the foreseeable future.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “there were 2.7 million job openings on the last business day of January 2010 nationwide. The job openings rate rose over the month to 2.1 percent, the highest the rate has been since February 2009.”

To view the full report, click here.

HMS launches CONNEX at HIMSS 2010

The theme of HIMSS 2010 is definitely interoperability and meaningful use.  I give it to HIMSS that they were on the interoperability train years ago and started the interoperability showcase.  The difference this year is that every company is now taking about how they will work nice with others.

On Wednesday, we will do a complete wrap-up of the show first hand.  Until, here is a nugget of information out today from our very own HMS here in Nashville.  HMS announced today the launch of a new interoperability product for customers that will enable the exchange of clinical data between third party systems, health information exchanges, and public registries.  The new product will assist clients in qualifying for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act HITECH stimulus funds. HMS ConnexSM is built around Mirth Corporation’s technology platform and customized for the HMS product suite.  Mirth provides the leading open source solution for healthcare interoperability.   

HMS Connex is designed to help customers achieve Stage 1 Meaningful Use interoperability requirements, specifically reporting hospital quality measures to CMS, exchanging key clinical information among providers of care (Continuity of Care Document standards), submitting lab results to public health agencies, and submitting data to immunization registries.

HMS has provided a nice matrix to help hospitals determine their position in regards to these new standards.  (http://www.hmstn.com/technologies/Meaningful_Use_Matrix.pdf)

The care goals of ARRA have been clearly established and in order to effectively achieve data exchange requirements, an interoperability solution is required.

“HMS understands the challenge that each community hospital will face not only in purchasing and implementing new software, but the workflow and process changes that will be necessary to maximize the technology, gain user acceptance and ultimately achieve meaningful use.  That is why we are doing everything we can to ready our systems, expand our implementation teams and add products like HMS Connex that will aid them in this process,” said Tom Stephenson, president and CEO.

Nashville Tech Story (12/29/09)

As the year comes to a close, it certainly seems as if the economy is picking up in the Nashville technology arena. Tech companies in our community seem to be hiring by the second.

Axis Accounting Systems announced its New Director of Business Development, Eddy Richardson.

HMS has hired 5 new staff members, Tina Brewer, Lisa Feltz, Allison Hopper, Schermonique Plainer and Rick Stuebing.

change:healthcare has hired Michael Vucovich as director of data architecture and Josh Owens as a data programmer.

C3 Consulting LLC has expanded its health care practice with Vicki Y. Estrin.

KraftCPAs PLLC admitted Chris Hight to membership in the firm.

According to the Nashville Business Journal, 20 percent of Nashville Marketing Companies plan to hire in 2010.  Let’s hope things continue to climb as we enter 2010.