Former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle is bullish on the industry surrounding electronic medical information for patients. Daschle was speaking at a conference in Franklin Tuesday on healthcare information technology.
Daschle was introduced by his one-time colleague, Tennessee’s former Senator Bill Frist, who talked up Nashville’s role as a healthcare innovator. Daschle says it’s a time of unprecedented growth for investment in patient data technology.
“Nationally, experts predict that this market will grow 15 percent annually or more over the next five years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of health IT jobs in our nation is projected to grow rapidly, with an anticipated 20 percent increase, just between 2008 and 2018 alone.”
Daschle says improving healthcare IT will be particularly useful in rural parts of Tennessee, as in his native South Dakota. But the industry faces hurdles in making data transferable across different systems, while protecting it under federal privacy rules.
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