NMM
Introduction to Nursing Informatics
 The convergence of telecommunication and
computer industry has seen a pervasive increase
in how we communicate and process information.
 Integrated systems support evidence-based
nursing practice, facilitate nurses participation in
the healthcare team, and document nurses
contribution to patient care outcomes.
 Nurses are major stakeholders in healthcare and
based on their knowledge, they translate data to
information, information to knowledge, and
knowledge the wisdom.
 For greater achievement in nursing practice,
nurses need to desire and adopt innovative
means to make their contribution did the patient
care process and patient outcome visible.
Nursing informatics will bring nursing
contributions the health outcomes visible.
Nursing Informatics
The evolution of the terms informatics and nursing
informatics proceed as follows:
 1957 - first coined by Karl Steinbuch as
“informatiks”.
 1962 – Phillipe Dreyfus use the term
“informatique”; Walter Bauer translated it into
“informatics”.
 1980 – Scholes and Barber coined the term
“nursing informatics”.
 1980s - the theory of nursing informatics was
initially seen in literature, including a definition of
“combining nursing, information, and computer
sciences for managing and processing data into
knowledge for use in nursing practice” (Murphy,
2010).
 1994 - The American Nurses Association (ANA)
began developing a statement to describe and
define the scope of nursing informatics (Baker,
2012).
Evolved and been refined by ANA 2008: “a
specialty that integrates nursing science,
computer science, and information science to
manage and communicate data, information,
knowledge, and with them in nursing practice.”
 American Medical Informatics Association
(AMIA): “nursing informatics science in practice
integrates nursing, its information and knowledge
and their management, with information and
communication technologies to promote the
health of people, families, and communities
worldwide.”
 Healthcare Information and Management System
Society (HIMSS) defines informatics: “a specialty
that integrates nursing science, computer
science, and information science to manage and
NCM 110 (PRELIMS) – LESSON 2 1
communicate data, information, knowledge and
wisdom in nursing practice.”
 Informatics -becoming increasingly present in our
profession due to rapidly changing technologic
advances.
 Healthcare systems – assimilating technology into
daily practice at a quick pace.
 Security and patient privacy – upheld while
achieving the goal of transforming data into useful
knowledge.
 Integrating informatics with evidence-based
practice (EBP) can only help improve the care we
provide to our patients.
 Applying technology to knowledge may help
identify potential problems earlier.
Example: use of electronic documentation,
identifying changes inpatient status can occur
quickly because the information is readily available.
Trending both patient vital signs is always
accessible and the data are interpreted, analyzed,
end arranged.
The nurse is able to use the knowledge to
formalize an appropriate plan of action.
 Standardizing nursing language -facilitate
acceptance of new methods of documentation in
the electronic health record.
 Template for nursing notes -one method of
assisting with our daily workload. The use of
template can remind nurses of important
information required in the documentation of
patient care.
 Research studies, patient care data, and
national and local standards - used to develop
informatics program at healthcare organizations.
Other measures include return on investment
analysis, patient preferences and/or needs, an
infection control data.
 How’s the need for technology addresses: high
rate of medication errors is identified (how and why
errors are occurring must be conducted).
Following data collection, findings are presented to
a review board.
A plan to improve the problem is implemented,
such as the use of bar code scanners.
Data collection - continues to determine if
implementation is successful.
The most important piece of implementation is
presentation of evidence to staff to identify how
change will improve the day-to-day actions of
nurses.
 Because there were too many definitions of nursing
informatics causing the specialty to grow without
solid foundation, they believed that without this
foundation it was difficult to build a solid informatics
practice or the needed educational base for
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specialty practice.(Staggers and Thompson 2002).
They Performed a critical analysis of definition
resulted in a new definition which is as follows:
>The goal of nursing informatics is to improve the
health of populations, communities, families,
and individuals by optimizing information
management and communication.
>These activities include the design and use of
informatic solutions and/or technology to support all
areas of nursing including, but not limited to, the
direct provision of care, establishing effective
administrative systems, designing useful decision
support systems, managing and delivering
educational experiences, enhancing supporting
lifelong learning, and supporting nursing research.
>Individual - refers to patients, healthcare
consumers, and any other recipient of nursing care
or informatics solutions.
>Patient - Your first two consumers in both a
Wellness and illness model
 NI is one example of a discipline specific
informatics practice within the broader category of
health informatics.
NI has become well established within nursing
since it's recognition as he specialty for registered
nurses by the American Nurses Association 1992.
It focuses on the representation of nursing data,
information, knowledge, and wisdom as well as the
management and communication of nursing
information within a broader context of health
informatics.
Benefits of Nursing Informatics in Healthcare
Benefit #1: Nursing Informatics and Influences IT
systems
 Nursing informatics specialists spend much of
their time helping to develop, implement, and
optimize computerized patient information
systems.
 Blend of clinical and technical knowledge and
experience that makes them perfect liaisons
between the clinical and technical communities.
 Early contributions of nursing informatics: help
move healthcare away from paper forms and
into electronic documentation.
 Today: nurse’s standardized notes are
immediate available to physicians and other
caregivers through HER systems. Work flow
and decisions are more informed and efficient.
 Many EHR vendors recognized the value of
hiring nurse. – EHR vendors acquired a double-
barreled secret weapon because nurse
informaticist:
-recommended the most practical layout for
forms and reports, and the best processes for
electronic medication administration
NCM 110 (PRELIMS) – LESSON 2 2
-prevent HER mutiny because they can predict
clinician reactions to technologically efficient –
but clinically clumsy – workflows, and shape EHRs
that avoid these poor workflows
Nursing Informatics Specialists are Trilingual:
1. understand the clinical language of efficient
patient care
2. translate knowledge and clinician feedback into
the technical language of business analysts and
programmers
3. communicate clinical and technical matters with
administrative leadership
 Nursing informatics specialists – qualified and
have proven to be indispensable to the
development of superior healthcare IT system.
 Informatics professionals with a nursing
background combine the best of both worlds:
deep expertise in the clinical care helps nurse
informatics understand the needs and stresses of
the clinical workflow, while their education and
background with information technology systems
and data analytics helps them sculpt health IT
infrastructure into a meaningful and helpful tools.
-Health IT Analytics
Benefit #2: Nursing Informatics leverages
evidence-based clinical best practices
 Most clinicians want to apply their knowledge and
experience to improve patient care.
 Nurse informatics takes it a few steps further by:
1. researching clinical nursing practices outside
their own experiences
2. finding evidence to prove which clinical
practices are best
3. influencing the design of clinical systems to
support and promote the best evidence-based
practices and workflow
4. training other nurses to use clinical IT systems
Benefit #3: Nursing Informatics generates
stronger training in clinical IT systems
 Clinical IT systems – complicated, and their
interfaces and workflows are not always intuitive.
 Nursing informatics specialists – well-suited to
teach other nurses how to get the full benefits of
these systems
 Nurse informaticists
–helped design and create those very systems
-they understand the reason from a nursing care
perspective, for the structure of each digital from
and each sequence of clicks
-they can explain built in interoperability and
behind the scenes interfaces to other clinical
systems in language that’s easily understood by
nurses
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Benefit #4: Nursing Informatics leverage IT Benefit #6: Nursing Informatics enrich the
investment evolving healthcare delivery system
 Every health facility invests a significant amount  Advances in healthcare technology launch new
of their budget on essential health information options for healthcare delivery, and nurse
technology products invest a significant amount informatics specialists are helping ensure
of their budget on essential health information these options are beneficial to both
technology products and services. These  Examples: development in communication
include patient care systems like PACS and technology and remote healthcare, known as
electronic medical records system, telehealth
communication technologies like pagers and 
secure messaging systems and analytics tools.
 NI help get maximum value from these
investments in at least three ways:
-ensure that systems are designed to support
effective patient care workflow
-help train other nurses to use IT efficiently
-apply advanced analytics strategies to develop
predictive models
 Example of predictive model: Texas Health
Resource in Dallas-Fort Worth
 The informatics nurses use tools to identify the
risk of sepsis, risk of readmission, and potential
benefits from palliative care

Benefit #5: Nursing Informatics contributes

unique wisdom to clinical care that is acquired
only though a deep understanding of both
clinical and data analysis
 Informatics nurse specialists
-work with leadership regarding regulatory and
quality initiative and governance for technology
implementation and change.
Example: they work with the delivery-of-care-
team, the chief of nursing officer, chief medical
officer, and quality leadership who might give us
a directive based on improving patient safety by
decreasing readmission.
-identify the key areas where studies identify
where problems arise inadequate discharge
education, a patient doesn’t have support at
home, poor hearing or sight, or being on multiple
medication.
They’ll take those variables and identify how and
wherein the system they should alert the nurse
that this is a possible red flag and give her the
elements of a plan to decrease the risk of
readmit.
They’ll explain to technical and application team
what nurses need the system do.
They build it, and the nurses validate the build.
The nurses go back to clinical leadership and
demonstrate what was designed and built.
-understand data analysis and nursing practice,
they immediately know which trends are worth
analyzing, and which anomalies are significant
enough to escalate.