PERSPECTIVES ON

NURSING INFORMATICS OF
THE FOLLOWING
COUNTRIES
Nursing Informatics in CANADA
• The use of technology in nursing is not new, in fact nurses have become proficient in utilizing and adapting
complex technology into caring nursing practice for decades, at least since the time of Florence Nightingale
in the United Kingdom and even earlier, when Jeanne Mance (1606-1673) founded the first hospital in
Montreal, Canada in 1642. Various forms of machinery such as ventilators and physiological monitors were
first used in intensive and critical care settings, and are now currently used in adapted form in less acute
areas, even in home care.

• Nursing has evolved significantly over the past few decades, with many of the changes being driven by
advances in information and communication technology (ICT). ICT has permeated all aspects of society,
including health care and affects all members of the interdisciplinary health team. Since nurses are the
largest group of health care providers, discipline-specific competencies in the use of ICT and other
technologies are imperative. This realization has catalyzed the steady development of nursing informatics.
• Nursing informatics began to evolve as nurses participated in the early initiatives in hospital information
system adoption in various health agencies across the nation. As these systems improved, specialized
nursing components and even free-standing nursing information systems began to sprout up. Early
systems were primarily imported from other countries, especially the USA. By the late 1980s, most
hospitals had at least a rudimentary information system that required nurses to enter common data such
as admission profiles and basic care requirements like diet, medications, and treatments into a computer
as part of their routine duties.
Nursing Informatics in EUROPE
• In Europe, as in many countries worldwide, the main rational for implementing a greater use of
information technology (IT) in the healthcare sector is to improve safety and quality, improve patient
outcomes, and at the same time try to reduce costs of healthcare. •Europe is a continent with over 750
million inhabitants in about 50 countries with many different languages, culture, social system, and other
living condition. This makes obvious that it is not possible to provide the entire picture of nursing
informatics in the area.

• The main mission, in Europe, is to established a stable infrastructure quality, facilitates the reduction of
errors, and the delivery of evidence-based and cost-effective care. Some core building blocks of this are
electronic health record (EHRs), nursing informatics education at all level, communication and
terminologies, and standards for technology, communication, and patient care .
 Nursing Informatics in PACIFIC RIM
• The health environment is changing at an ever-increasing pace due to the proliferation of new and
emerging technologies. Embracing the advances in technology enable us to deliver healthcare in new and
innovative ways.

• New Zealand has been embracing these changes in technology and has particularly benefited from the
development of infrastructure.

• Higher speed networks including wireless and broadband are enabling information in a variety of formats
to be shared. Digital images are becoming the norm as well. Exploration into telehealth has occurred in a
number of fields including teledermatology, teleradiology, telepsychiatry and telepediatrics.
• Improvements in portabillity are now allowing the use of technology in greater range of settings.
Examples are the personal digital assistants (PDA) and tablets  are being used or trialed in the clinical
settings both students and healthcare professionals.

• Scope of development activities under HISO includes the following categorization scheme:
• Records structure and contents – data formats.
• Vocabulary – codes for medical and other healthcare terms.
• Messaging – standards used for the interchange of data.
• Security and privacy – how access to information is managed.
 Nursing Informatics in ASIA
• Nursing informatics is the blend of clinical nursing skills with some computer processes and high level
information management. Nursing informatics is a completely new aspect in the health care industry and
functions with the combination of nursing skills and technological expertise. The specialists in this field
are required to maintain nursing data. They are also expected to communicate any information that can
improvise and pace decision making by patients, nurses and other consumers and health care providers.
The process of nursing involves four different steps. These are planning, execution, observation and
assessment. However, since information management is combined with the process of nursing and also
with its practice, a few nursing communities have added a new step in the process that is known as
documentation. When studied deeply, the documentation and specific patient-centered care have been
identified as the main role players in nursing processes. Automated documentation is very essential, and
not only for nursing, but for every patient care system. Updated and precise information about the patient
at every level of nursing can be the way to secure and better quality patient care. There are a few things
that need to be done in health care and nursing facilities for the successful execution of the information
system.
• Primarily, it is essential to have good, specifically designed systems that can handle the nursing system in
an organization. Secondly, but of equal importance, is the acceptance and proper integration of the newly
installed information system into the normal workflow. Finally, the organization should also have
suitable resources that can maintain the above mentioned two factors.

• Nurse informatics specialists are the best that a nursing facility or a hospital can get when it comes to
control nursing informatics. What are nursing informatics specialists? These specialists can be considered
as expert clinicians that have an extensive background in clinical practices. Nursing informatics
specialists are experienced professionals who have utilized and implemented the nursing process. These
nurses possess critical thinking skills as well as high analytical skills. The nurses are also capable to
understand the delivery workflow of patient care and thus can find better integration points for the
process of automated documentation. Hence, it can be said that nursing informatics specialists are the
best project managers since they are the link between the nursing process and project management
process.
• To gain excellence in the field of nurse informatics, one should know about relational databases and also
be skilled in Microsoft Office, more importantly with Excel, Visio and Access. Reasons why these jobs
are essential to healthcareThe successful implementation of nursing informatics can bring fruitful results
to health care systems as well as to patients.

• Some instances in which they prove to be valuable are mentioned below: Manual work cannot be always
accurate and there is always a possibility of errors. Nurse informatics can provide automated support to
nursing processes by technological means. Since it is automated, it can very effectively provide accurate
results and thus minimizes the risks of getting errors. All this can considerably increase the workflow of
the nurses. Since the information is digital, all the information can be collected and grouped and re-used
for medical and research purposes.
• Provide networking, education and information resources that enrich and strengthen the roles of nurses in
the field of informatics. The field of nursing informatics includes domains of clinical information,
education, research and administrative decision support. Goals  Provide nursing leadership for the
development of Nursing/Health informatics in Singapore.
•   Establish international networking opportunities for nurse informaticians.
•   Facilitate informatics educational opportunities for all nurses in Singapore.
•   Expand awareness of Nursing Informatics to all nurses and the healthcare community.
 NURSING INFORMATICS IN SOUTH AMERICA
• Nursing Informatics in 13 South America countries has been based more on ACTIVITIES of INDIVIDUALS than on a
policy established by governments or national efforts.

Each country has varied levels of development and deployment of technological resources.  Technology is visible
tendency in:

1.  Health

2.  Nursing Education

3.  Nursing Practice

4.  Nursing research

5.  Administration
• Computers are considered an important tool to help nurses take care of patients and to organize nursing
service and nursing education.The growth of information technology in Latin America and the Caribbean
has been consistently the world’s highest for 20 years.

Most developed parts of the country have better access and ability to implement services and applications
in nursing. 

Health institutes and universities are exploring ways to introduce news resources on order to facilitate the
process of the patient care and promote quality and safety. 

• Nursing has been identified around the world as an emerging profession for over a100 years.

Nurses were considered as the primary users of technology in healthcare (Safran,Slack, and Bleich 1989)
• Historically nurses are used to facing challenges, adapting new tools in to the practice to improve their
performance. Creating new models to enhance patient care.
• Technology -can represent a unique instrument to help nurses to face further challenges and discover
how to use its resources to involve and maybe to design their way taking care of the people
(Marin,1996).

Information-is the key element for decision- making process in the healthcare area.
the more specific information in place to support clinical decisions, the better care can be delivered to the
patient. 
• Technology plays an important role in facilitating access to the information because for the information
to be useful and meaningful, it has to be timely. There is a clear trend in the direction of the
computerization of health records.