INDEX

Sl No Content Page No
01 Introduction 01
02 Definition of Informatics 01-02
03 Graves & Corcoran Model of Nursing Informatics 03-04
04 Patient centered Informatics Model 05
05 Nursing Minimum Data Set 06
06 Role of the Nursing Informatics Specialist 07-08
07 Standards and scoring guidelines for nursing languages 09
08 Importance of nursing informatics 10-12
09 Human factors that affect Nursing Informatics practice 12-13
10 Electronic Health record and Clinical Information System 13-33
11 Definition of EHR 14
12 History of EHR 14,15
13 Common types of health records 15-17
- electronic medical record
- electronic patient record
- computerized patient record
- electronic health care record
- Virtual EHR
-personal health record
14 Scope and purposes of EHR 18
15 Secondary uses of EHR 19
16 Core EHR and extended EHR 20
17 Key components of EHR 21-22
18 Standards for inter-operable EHR 23-25
19 Expected EHR criteria 26
20 Functional needs and design criteria 26-30
21 Building connections: making EHRs work 30-33
22 Advantages and disadvantages of paper record 34
23 Advantages and disadvantages of EHR 34
24 Entering information-bed side system, point-of-care system, 35
and Unit system
25 Legal and ethical issues related to information technology 36-38
26 Types of connectivity 39
27 Electronic forms of communication 40-41
28 Computer advances in nursing practice 41-43
29 Uses of the internet 43
30 Telehealth, e-health, consumer health informatics 44,45
31 Conclusion 46
32 Summary 46
33 Bibliography 47-48
CONCLUSION
Registered nurses and other stakeholders in health care delivery require information on
nursing practice and its relationship to client outcomes. A coordinated system to collect,
store and retrieve nursing data is essential for health human resource planning, and to
expand knowledge and research on determinants of quality nursing care. Registered
nurses should advocate and lead in implementing the collection, storage and retrieval of
nursing data at the national level.” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2001, November) The
National Nurses Association, the provincial and territorial nurses associations and nursing
informatics interest groups are instrumental in supporting nurses’ involvement with
innovations in health informatics by disseminating information and promoting standards
and ethics in the development of nursing informatics. Current applications of nursing
informatics cover many kinds of clinical, education, administrative, research and health
care systems initiatives (e.g. Telehealth, electronic health records, decision support
systems, workload measurement, virtual education).

Nevertheless, the focus of nursing informatics is on the role of nursing within health care
organizations. In most health care organizations, nurses manage both patient care and
patient care units within the organization. Usually nurse clinicians manage patient care
and nurse managers administer the patient care units within the organization. Therefore,
for some time, nursing’s role in the management of information has been considered to
include both the information necessary to manage patient care using the nursing process
and the information necessary for managing patient care units within the organization.
With regard to the nursing management of patient care, nursing practice is
information intensive. Nurses constantly handle enormous volumes of patient care
information. In fact, nurses constantly process information mentally, manually and
electronically. Nurses have long been recognized as the interface between the patient and
the health care organization. Nurses integrate information from many diverse sources
throughout the organization to provide patient care and to coordinate the patient’s contact
with health care services and facilities. In addition, they manage patient care information
for purposes of providing nursing care to patients. For almost 40 years it has been widely
recognized that nurses spend enormous amounts of time engaged in information handling;
the seminal study, in three New York hospitals, found that registered nurses spend from
36 to 64% of their time on information handling, with those in administrative positions
spending the most time (Jydstrup & Gross, 1966). Nurses must be able to manage and
process nursing data, information, and knowledge to support patient care delivery in
diverse care delivery settings (Graves & Corcoran, 1989). There is an essential linkage
among access to information, client outcomes and patient safety. “As Lang has succinctly
and aptly described the present situation: If we cannot name it, we cannot control it,
finance it, teach it, research it or put it into public policy” (Clark &
Lang N., 1992).
Access to information about their practice arms nurses with evidence to support the
contribution of nursing to patient outcomes. Outcomes research is an essential foundation
for evidence based nursing practice. Evidence based practice is a means of promoting and
enhancing patient safety

SUMMARY
Health informatics (also called health care informatics, healthcare informatics,
medical informatics, nursing informatics, or biomedical informatics) is a discipline at
the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care. It deals with
the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage,
retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine. Health informatics tools
include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and
information and communication systems. It is applied to the areas of nursing, clinical
care, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, occupational therapy, and (bio) medical research.

The UK Council of Health Informatics Professions has suggested eight key constituencies
within the domain - information management, knowledge management,
portfolio/programme/project management, ICT, education and research, clinical
informatics, health records (service and business-related), health informatics service
management. Since the 1970s the most prominent international coordinating body has
been the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA)

Religare Technova IT solutions is attempting a new service to improve the healthcare

information system in India. The Indian Association for Medical Informatics, or IAMI,
is a professional society that plays a role in promoting and furthering the application of
informatics in the fields of healthcare, bioscience and medicine in India. It was established
in 1993.

The nurse’s role in patient care has evolved, and so has their role in the use of technology
to improve health care delivery. Nursing informatics is the sub-discipline of health
informatics that applies information technology to the skills and work of nurses in
healthcare. It integrates the science of nursing, computer technology and information
science to enhance the quality of the nursing practice, through improved communication,
documentation and efficiency.

Assisting in all aspects of a patient’s nursing care from admission to discharge,

technology is drastically altering the ways nurses diagnose, treat, administer care for, and
manage their patients. The integration of information technology into nursing enables the
appropriate flow of data collected by nurses, improving access to patient information at
the point of care, and enhancing nursing abilities to benchmark, monitor, and audit quality
measures. With nursing informatics, the passion for nursing, technology, and innovation
leads to improved patient outcomes and higher quality patient – nurse interactions.

Nurses that want to shape and improve the technology of the nursing practice are able to
merge the two fields through our online Master of Science in Health Informatics degree
program. Those more interested in improving patient data and the electronic health record
(EHR), are able to do so through our Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Health Information
Management.