NI - MODULE 1

• The convergence of the telecommunications 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 health care team, and document nurses’ contribution to patient care outcomes.
• Nurses are major stakeholders in health care and based on their knowledge, they translate data to information, information to knowledge and knowledge to wisdom.
• For greater achievement in nursing practice, nurses need to desire and adopt innovative means to make their contribution to the patient care process and patient outcome visible.
• Nursing informatics (NI) will bring nursing contributions to health outcomes visible.
• Information science is the science and practice dealing with the effective collection, storage, retrieval, and use of information.
• Information Science is a multidisciplinary science that involves aspects from computer science, cognitive science, social science, communication science, and library science to deal with obtaining, gathering, organizing, manipulating, managing, storing, retrieving, recapturing, disposing of, distributing, or broadcasting information.
• Information Science studies everything that deals with information and can be defined as the study of information systems.
• Information Science originated as a sub-discipline of computer science, in an attempt to understand and rationalize the management of technology within organizations.
• Information Science has matured into a major field of management that is increasingly being emphasized as an important area of research in management studies and has expanded to examine the human-computer interaction, interfacing, and interaction of people, information systems, and corporations.
• In the mid-1980s, Blum (1986) introduced the concepts of data, information and knowledge as a framework for understanding clinical information systems and their impact on health care.
• Information science is the study of information systems, the application and usage of knowledge focuses on why and how technology can be put to best use to serve the information flow within the organization.
• The term “nursing informatics” was initially seen in literature in the 1980s, including a definition of combining nursing, information, and computer sciences for managing and processing data into knowledge for using in nursing practice.
• In 1994, The American Nurses Association (ANA) began developing a statement to describe and define the scope of nursing informatics.
• Another definition of nursing informatics comes from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), stating it as a science and practice that integrates nursing, its information and knowledge, and their management, with information and communication technologies to promote the health of people, families, and communities worldwide.
• The definition and goal of NI is based upon work by Staggers and Thompson (2002) and evolved in this version to include the concept of wisdom.
• Otherwise, the NI definition is essentially synonymous with the 2001 Scope and Standards document.
• NI is one example of a discipline-specific informatics practice within the broader category of health informatics.
• The term patient refers to consumers in both a wellness and illness model.
• The goal of NI is to improve the health of communities, families, and individuals by optimizing information management and communication.
• The meaning of nursing informatics has evolved and been refined, with the American Nurses Association (2008) definition stating it as a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice.
• NI has become well established within nursing since its recognition as a specialty for registered nurses by the American Nurses Association (ANA) in 1992.
• The three concepts of clinical information system as espoused by Blum are: (1) clinical information system is a tool for clinicians, (2) clinical information system is a tool for managing clinical information, and (3) clinical information system is a tool for managing clinical processes.
• Nursing informatics (NI) has also been defined as a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice.
• NI supports consumers, patients, nurses, and other providers in their decision making in all roles and settings.
• The term individuals refers to patients, healthcare consumers, and any other recipient of nursing care or informatics solutions.
• NI focuses on the representation of nursing data, information, knowledge, and wisdom as well as the management and communication of nursing information within the broader context of health informatics.