Panel: Technology could bridge shortage of nurses, doctors

Sanford Health hosts summit on rural health care

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Emerging technologies will be instrumental in health care to fill the void left by fewer nurses and doctors, particularly in rural America.

That was the consensus of a panel that participated in Sanford Health’s Summit on the Future of Health Care. The summit included health care leaders and policy experts from around the country who were in Sioux Falls Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of nurses are expected to leave the field in the next few years, and there will be 25 percent few physicians in rural areas by 2030, said Dr. Dave Newman, a Sanford endocrinologist who moderated the four-person panel entitled “How can we work smarter, not harder?”

“We have to change the way we do our work,” said Erica DeBoer, Sanford’s chief nursing officer. “There’s not going to be more people, so unless we truly utilize technology to change the way we do our work, as well as engage the people who are doing the work to solve those problems, it’s going to be impossible for us to move forward.”

DeBoer was joined on the panel by Toni Thomas, the chief experience officer & industry advisor to Microsoft and Ann Mond Johnson, the CEO of the American Telemedicine Association.

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