Document Imaging, by Order of the President

Now that the inauguration of Barack Obama is almost here, the substance of his policies are becoming more of an issue than his charm as a speaker.

Perhaps surprisingly, document imaging is an integral part of those policies. President Obama plans to deploy electronic health records nationwide. Document imaging is the starting point for that task, as paper documents are moved into digital form.

John Halamka at The Health Care Blog has an interesting and informed take on this matter. As a healthcare expert and someone who works in the field (check out his credentials, they're impressive), Halamka views Obama's initiatives in terms of the jobs it can create. In that sense, the electronic records effort is a part of the new President's overall economic recovery plan.

Halamka predicts that the electronic records push will create tens of thousands of high-tech jobs.

Other commentators argue that the majority of work sparked by Obama's plan will be on the very front end of the process, the pure document and scanning tasks, rather than the more complex sharing and interoperability area.

Either way, the document imaging industry is looking like an early beneficiary of the events of November 4, 2008.