Becker's Hospital Review

90 CIO / HEALTH IT 20 best cities for technology jobs By Naomi Diaz A ustin, Texas, tops the list when it comes to demand for IT profession- als in the U.S., according to an index released March 7 by the IT industry trade group CompTIA. To determine city rankings, CompTIA looked at 2021 job posting data from 20 metropolitan areas with populations over 250,000, to determine where the demand for tech workers is greatest. e cities were then ranked based on cost of living, number of postings for open IT positions and projected job growth over the next 12 months and the next five years. e 20 best tech job cities in the U.S., accord- ing to CompTIA: 1. Austin, Texas 2. San Jose, Calif. 3. Dallas 4. Atlanta 5. Huntsville, Ala. 6. Charlotte, N.C. 7. Raleigh, N.C. 8. San Francisco 9. Seattle 10. Washington, D.C. 11. Lansing, Mich. 12. Baltimore 13. Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. 14. Trenton, N.J. 15. Boulder, Colo. 16. New York City 17. Colorado Springs, Colo. 18. Des Moines, Iowa 19. Hartford, Conn. 20. Tallahassee, Fla. n 5 high-profile health IT acquisitions in 2022 By Katie Adams H ere are five key health IT acquisitions that have been announced or have closed between January and March. 1. Microsoft completed its $19.7 billion acquisition of AI speech recognition company Nuance. By combining the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare with Nuance's medical dicta- tion and transcription tools, Microsoft aims to extend ambient clinical intelligence and other Microsoft cloud services to the healthcare industry. 2. Athenahealth was acquired by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital for $17 billion. Athenahealth's cur- rent management team will continue to lead the company. 3. Google reached a deal to acquire cybersecurity firm Mandi- ant for $5.4 billion. With the acquisition, Google aims to bolster its cloud unit with more cybersecurity offerings to protect busi- nesses across industries that have seen an increase in attacks on their systems. The deal is expected to close in 2022. 4. Revenue cycle management company R1 RCM is poised to acquire Cloudmed, an AI-based RCM platform, in an all-stock deal worth about $4.1 billion. The companies expect the trans- action to close in the second quarter of 2022. 5. IBM reached a deal with investment firm Francisco Partners to sell its data and assets from Watson Health, which might be an effort to streamline IBM's operations and focus the company on cloud computing. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed. At the time of publication, the deal was expected to close in the second quarter of 2022. n US healthcare agencies request data on COVID-19 misinformation By Georgina Gonzalez H HS and the surgeon general said they are launching a request for information from researchers, healthcare workers, communi- ty organizations and tech platforms to understand how misinformation has affected the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Surgeon general Vivek Murthy, MD, is calling for re- search, data and personal experiences on the effects of health misinformation in an attempt to deepen knowledge on the matter, according to a March 3 notice on the HHS website. "The purpose of this RFI is to understand the impact of COVID-19 misinformation on healthcare infra- structure during the pandemic, including quality of care, health decisions, cost and worker morale and safety; the unique role that technology platforms play in the societal response to the COVID-19 pan- demic; and implications for future public health emergencies," read a statement from the National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan. The request for information will ask about the effect of misinformation on healthcare, the relationship between health misinformation and technology platforms and the community effect of health misin- formation, according to the HHS website. n

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