Nursing informatics.

Abstract

Nursing informatics refers to a specialty “that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice” (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2008, p. 1). The practice of nursing informatics involves making information available to support patients, nurses, and other healthcare providers in decision making. In 2008, there were 8,100 nurse informaticists working in the United States (Health Resources and Services Administration, 2010). Demand has grown markedly in the last several years, primarily driven by the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which has stimulated electronic health record (EHR) use (Furukawa et al., 2012). In 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported that 80% of hospitals and more than 50% of physician and other providers were adopting the use of EHRs (HHS, 2013). Other factors contributing to the rising demand for nurse informaticists include the advances in technology and increasing pressure for health organizations to deliver • system development: customizing or updating vendor systems and developing or updating homegrown systems; • clinical analytics: discovering and communicating meaningful patterns of clinical data for performance monitoring, compliance and integrity management, quality improvement, decision support, and population health management; • quality initiatives/reporting: problem solving, system evaluation, and quality improvement;