Milt Capps has taken another look at Middle Tennessee's need to attract, cultivate and retain high-end engineering and IT talent. He reports on the conversation at a recent meeting hosted by Vanderbilt professor Germain Boer, where Shareable Ink CEO Stephen Hau said Nashville has all the ingredients for high-tech success in health care, "except for the engineers."

Many of Hau's comments seem to translate into a pressing need to create a critical mass of superior engineering talent that can be virtually, if not literally under one roof in Nashville, close enough to network, spark ideas and encourage one another onward to address tough engineering problems. He made clear he's thinking-through the matter with others and is likely to take some collaborative action, at some point.

As part of a nationwide initiative with NorthStar Anesthesia, Capella Healthcare's River Park Hospital in McMinnville, Tenn., will implement Shareable Ink's digital pen and paper system for docuenting anesthesia cases. Shareable Ink's system converts pen strokes into electronic data for patient medical records, with the goal of letting doctors document in their customery fashion without losing productivity.

Our friends at Nashville Medical News touched base recently with Stephen Hau, who relocated his Shareable Ink venture here from Boston last year. He's jazzed about the broad level of institutional support for area entrepreneurs and tells us he recently launched a partnership with Dallas-based T-System, which works to automate the information collected at 1,700 hospitals' emergency departments.

Hau also shares his thoughts on one of the most pressing topics of Middle Tennessee's tech scene, our talent pool. Echoing a point many others have made, he says quality is not the issue.

“We’ve built an impressive team in Nashville with top-notch, local talent. On the technology front, there are strong candidates in Nashville, but they are few and far between. While I’m not worried about finding the next five strong engineers, sourcing the next 50 will be a challenge. Tod Fetherling of the Nashville Technology Council is a wonderful resource, and Professor Kenneth Galloway, dean of Engineering at Vanderbilt, has been helpful too. Nashville needs more engineering talent, and I hope creating meaningful jobs at ‘cool’ software companies can help.”

"Our team is thrilled with the success at Huguley Memorial Medical Center, which demonstrates Shareable Ink's effectiveness in helping health care organizations become more electronic," said Stephen S. Hau, President and CEO of Shareable Ink. "Furthermore, Shareable Ink has overcome the traditional challenge of providing software that meets the hospital's goals for electronic data and that physicians also love to use."