International and National Connections in e-Health for Nurses

Abstract

To provide care to the New Zealand (NZ) population of just over 4.5 million there are 50,060 nurses practising in NZ. This nursing workforce, as the single largest health professional group, is recognized as having enormous potential to advance health and disability outcomes. The improvements in internet access and speeds in NZ, the advances in web environments and the use of powerful integration engines, are now providing a background where contextual views of patient-centric data via portals is possible. With the move to Personal Health Records (PHR) and patients, as well as nurses and other health professionals, having access to patient health records, it becomes more imperative than ever for nurses to engage in informatics and to utilise the many existing resources available. This poster provides an overview of the international and national organisations and groups that nurses can connect with who are directly involved in e-health. Key organisations include the International Council of Nurses (ICN), the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), and IMIA – Nursing Informatics (IMIA-NI). Internationally, nursing informatics under IMIA has a history spanning over 30 years. The New Zealand representative position on IMIA-NI is currently held by Lucy Westbrooke. IMIA-NI has working groups aligned to IMIA working groups. The current working groups are Education, Standards and Consumer/Client Health Informatics as well as a strong Student group. NZ nurses are represented in most of the groups, with Michelle Honey being co-chair of the IMIA-NI Education Working Group. In this poster a number of different organisations are identified, along with distinguishing where New Zealand or nursing connections already exist. Additionally, web references for these organisations are provided which form useful starting places to access nursing informatics related resources.