Applying the Nursing Ecosystem Concept to Developing Strategic Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership for Valued Patient Care.

Research confirms entrepreneurial leadership encourages entrepreneurial behaviour and an entrepreneurial culture supports the development of 'entrepreneurial mindset'. Nurses implementing and optimizing information technology need to work with numerous stakeholders that collectively make up their ecosystem. Indeed, nurses with an entrepreneurial mindset increase their ability to sense opportunities and mobilize the resources and knowledge required to seek' informatics' opportunities to deliver patient centred care across the whole ecosystem.

Health workforce competencies needed for a digital world.

The health workforce constitutes a very significant health system building block. As such it needs to have the capacity to influence how health data are captured, processed and used at all levels of decision making. This requires a national strategy that ensures all new health professional graduates are adequately prepared and that the existing workforce is developed to make the best possible use of all available digital technologies.

Health information systems.

Health information provides the foundation for all decision making in healthcare whether clinical at the bed side, or at a national government level. This information is generally collected as part of systems which support administrative or clinical workflow and practice. This chapter describes the many and varied features of systems such as electronic health records (EHRs), how they fit with health information systems and how they collectively manage information flow.

Our health language and data collections.

All communication within the health industry is dependent upon the use of our health language consisting of a very extensive and complex vocabulary. Converting this language into computable formats is necessary in a digital environment with a strong reliance on data, information and knowledge sharing. This chapter describes our health language, what terminologies and ontologies are, their use and relationships with natural language, indexing, data standards, data collections and the need for data governance.

Health data and data governance.

Health is a knowledge industry, based on data collected to support care, service planning, financing and knowledge advancement. Increasingly there is a need to collect, retrieve and use health record information in an electronic format to provide greater flexibility, as this enables retrieval and display of data in multiple locations and formats irrespective of where the data were collected. Electronically maintained records require greater structure and consistency to achieve this.

Impact of data governance on a nation's healthcare system building blocks.

This chapter gives an overview of a nation's healthcare system, particularly for those who are familiar with IT but not healthcare or for those working in one area of healthcare who may not be familiar with the system and data requirements across the care continuum. The structure of this chapter uses the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Health systems framework with a focus on the need for data and information governance to achieve a sustainable health system delivering improved health for all, responsively and equitably meeting genuine demands for health services, with social and financial risk protection and overall improved efficiency. It is argued that there is a need to gather the right data and to process these data in a manner that provides good information in order to more fully understand how the health system is working and where and when it isn't working well.

National healthcare systems and the need for health information governance.

This chapter gives an overview of health data, information and knowledge governance needs and associated generic principles so that information systems are able to automate such data collections from point-of-care operational systems. Also covered are health information systems' dimensions and known barriers to the delivery of quality health services, including environmental, technology and governance influences of any population's health status within the context of national health systems. This is where health information managers and health informaticians need to resolve the many challenges associated with eHealth implementations where data are assets, efficient information flow is essential, the ability to acquire new knowledge desirable, and where the use of data and information needs to be viewed from a governance perspective to ensure reliable and quality information is obtained to enhance decision making.

Resource, quality and safety management.

This chapter gives an educational overview of: * Resource management relative to sustainability and the use casemix systems * Types of resources and their information system needs to support their optimal management * Quality, performance measurement options and associated information needs * Casemix systems' characteristics, usage and need for enterprise systems.

National standards in health informatics.

This chapter gives an educational overview of: * The relationship between standards and a national e-health strategy * National and international standards development processes * The Development of a national HI standards roadmap * The benefits of standards adoption.

Sustainable clinical knowledge management: an archetype development life cycle.

This chapter gives an educational overview of: 1. The significance of having a formal ontology of health care data 2. How openEHR has used an ontological approach to designing an electronic health record 3.

E-health records and future healthcare.

This chapter gives an educational overview of: * Data collected, stored in health records and used for multiple purposes * Electronic health records and how these are likely to influence our future * Personal health records * Clinical systems and their relationship to national data collections * Potential future use of new technologies.

Health care services, information systems & sustainability.

This chapter gives an educational overview of: * many competing characteristics within national health systems * national primary information and knowledge flows between health care entities * the role of information technologies in assisting health organizations become sustainable enterprises * the business of maintaining healthy populations for any nation * desirable e-health strategy objectives.

Health informatics - an introduction.

This chapter gives an educational overview of: * the scope of the health informatics discipline * health informatics and e-health definitions * health informatics professional networks * potential benefits of applying health informatics technologies.

Milestones of the IMIA-NI history and future directions.

IMIA-NI's past achievements are reflected upon in the context of its current strategic directions. Two key historical milestones are described in some detail, the ISO Reference terminology model for nursing and the International Nursing Minimum Data Set development project, as this work is continuing to influence future directions in health and nursing informatics. Current features of our health care environment are explored noting the current desire of most nations to implement electronic health records (EHRs) and its relationship with IMIA-NI's strategic directions.

Towards sustainability of health information systems: how can we define, measure and achieve it?

Health information systems (HIS) in their current form are rarely sustainable. In order to sustain our health information systems and with it our health systems, we need to focus on defining and maintaining sustainable Health Information System building blocks or components. These components need to be easily updatable when clinical knowledge (or anything else) changes, easily adaptable when business requirements or processes change, and easily exchangeable when technology advances.

Building health informatics skills for health professionals: results from the Australian Health Informatics Skill Needs Survey.

Objective: To ascertain health professionals' perceptions of health informatics skills required in their roles.

Design: A paper-based survey with a stratified random sample of Australian health professionals and a web-based survey open to all Australian health professionals were conducted.

Measurement: A questionnaire on the health professionals' perceived degree of competency required for a total of 69 specific skills in five skill categories based on the International Medical Informatics Association's (IMIA) set of recommendations on education and IMIA's scientific map.

Current and future trends in teaching and learning.

The University of the 21st century provides learning experiences in a new way, using a variety of new technologies, online resources and new educational delivery methods to suit. Flexibility and the adoption of adult learning methodologies are key strategic directions adopted by many. This chapter provides an overview of student learning behaviours, learning styles and the relationship between these and various teaching technologies in terms of changing academic roles and workloads as well as the need for them to acquire new skills and knowledge to teach effectively in these new environments.

A health informatics educational framework.

There is a need to be able to define a Health Informatician by their graduate attributes. Futhermore global health informatics education that facilitates student mobility requires a common understanding of educational outcomes. An internationally agreed health informatics education framework will facilitate us to meet these needs.

Academic standards, credit transfers and associated issues.

Various policies govern the way academic standards are managed and maintained. This includes organisational and program accreditation. Who decides what makes a program acceptable from a discipline and educational perspective? Should IMIA be developing accreditation guidelines for external program accreditation? Also the extent to which individual students are able to gain recognition for study undertaken elsewhere and thus reduce the length of the degree program undertaken varies by higher education provider.

Virtual university governance.

There is a need to establish collaboration alliances or partnerships if we are to provide global Health Informatics educatics education. Agreements need to make provision for the existing diversity between country educational systems as well as variations in funding, legislation and political systems and a number of other issues including intellectual property and copyright. Four virtual University governance models were identified, 1) evolution of existing universities, 2) newly created organisations collectively delivering one type of program eg MBA, 3) a consortium of partners using a common portal and 4) a commercial enterprise.

Information literacy-what it is about? Literature review of the concept and the context.

Objectives: The use of IT in health care has merged advanced knowledge and skills for health care professionals. Former studies indicate that basic skills in computer use are no more than comprehensive competencies to manage electronically stored information in health care. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature focusing on the concept information literacy in the field of health, nursing and medical informatics.

Globalisation of health and medical informatics education--what are the issues?

Purpose: We are witnessing a paradigm shift in higher education as a result of technological advances, adoption of on-line learning and a greater participation in e-commerce by higher education providers. Given the dearth of academics with high-level expertise in health informatics in many countries, we need to explore how best to use our scarce resources to have the greatest possible impact regarding the preparation of health professionals such that they can make the best possible use of available informatics technologies to support health service delivery.

Methods: The International Medical Informatics Association's (IMIA) education working group together with its institutional (academic members) is exploring how best to provide global and collaborative health informatics education and research.