Healthcare may help IT industry reverse job losses

The IT industry has been reeling, having cut a net 175,000 jobs in 2009, or about 13.2 percent of all announced U.S. job cuts across all industries last year. The decline is more than 12 percent greater than the 155,000 tech jobs shed in 2008. But there are some bright spots. Forrester Research recently forecast that U.S. IT spending would grow by 6.6 percent in 2010, reversing an 8.2 percent reduction last year. And then there is the health IT sector.

The push to convert to electronic medical records in time to capture federal stimulus money in 2011 already is having a positive impact on health IT hiring, InformationWeek reports. MEDecision, maker of care management software and payer-centric tools for business intelligence, added 50 employees in 2009 and expects to grow its payroll by another 100 people this year. As we report in the Also Noted section of FierceHealthIT today, Cerner has big expansion plans, including a new campus in Kansas to house an expected 4,000 new hires by 2016.

For more on the state of the health IT job market:
- take a look at this InformationWeek blog post

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