Well-planned implementation may lay the groundwork for health IT usability, but nursing informatics is the key to its optimization, ONC CNO Rebecca Freeman, PhD, RN, wrote in an ONC blog post.
The blog post, titled "Making health IT 'usable' on the frontlines," shares ways to improve health IT for the clinicians, IT staff and informatics professionals who use it every day. A key step is establishing well-trained, well-staffed and well-supported nursing informatics initiatives, according to Dr. Freeman.
A nursing informatics program should focus on managing and communicating data in nursing practice. Nursing informaticists are in a prime position to bridge connections between frontline clinicians and IT clinical analysts, given their background in nursing and IT systems.
"Nurse informaticists possess the ability to mediate and moderate governance and interdisciplinary committees to align practice, health IT, analytics and outcomes, and they are capable of significantly impacting the usability of health IT across the healthcare system," Dr. Freeman wrote.
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