IMPORTANCE AND APPLICATION OF NURSING INFORMATCS IN THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM OF THE

PHILIPPINES

BY: AUTA, ANNE ZENOM

OBJECTIVES:

To be the lead organization in promoting and advocating for nursing informatics in the fields of nursing education, research, practice and other advanced nursing specialties and certification.

To advance the field of nursing informatics in the Philippines by fostering innovation and scientific exchange, educating professionals and the public, and influencing decision and policy makers regarding the use of information in healthcare in general, and nursing, in particular.

To recommend the appropriate standards used in nursing informatics across the Philippines in the fields of nursing education, research and practice.

To build health care informatics competencies among nursing leaders in the country to support their need to integrate computer science, information science and nursing science in their respective fields of expertise.

To widen the community of practice by which nursing informatics may be applicable.

WHAT IS NURSING INFORMATICS?According to  Healthcare Information and Management

Systems Society (HIMSS), Nursing informatics (NI) is the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. NI supports nurses, consumers, patients, the inter professional healthcare team, and other stakeholders in their decision-making in all roles and settings to achieve desired outcome.

NURSING INFORMATICS According to Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS),The Healthcare Information Technology Directory is the go-to place to find products and services for the health it industry. Categories include Ambulatory, Education, Financial Management, Integration Tools, Mobile Healthcare, Network Solutions, Privacy and Security, Radiology and more.

Nursing informatics, as defined by the American Nurses Association (ANA), is a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science and information science to manage and communicate data, information and knowledge in nursing practice.

IMPORTANCE OF NURSING INFORMATICS  Nurses in clinical practice can document patient care as

well as access reference materials and databases via the World Wide Web.

They can monitor their patient outcomes by using automated clinical pathways.

The use of personal digital assistants with reference and charting information is now growing. Nurses use hospital computers to place nursing orders and plan care.

An informatics nurse in a clinical role may work in a hospital and be known as a clinical nurse analyst or clinical informatics specialist.

Typical responsibilities include data collection, outcome reporting, designing and managing clinical databases, creating quality surveys, creating communications using desktop publishing, and designing forms.

The nurse analyst has little or no patient contact but concentrates on the work processes, understanding how to improve them using technology and data management concepts.

A component of the role involves education of clinicians in information system concepts and, conversely, educating the technical people about health care.

APPLICATION OF NURSING INFORMATICS IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Philippines had a legislative provision authored by Senator Lito Lapid (2010)recognizing the importance of a health information technology in the Philippines that he authored the Health Information Technology Act of 2010 in response to Article 8, Section 11 of the 1987 Constitution which states that “the State shall adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health development which shall endeavor to make essential goods, health and other social services available to all the people”.

Information integrity and ensuring the safety of data transmission is an essential part, not only in nursing, but also, in the field of information and communications technology (ICT). And with the progressive integration of ICT concepts and protocols in the practice of nursing, whether in the clinical, academe or research, nurses should be prepared to become globally competitive healthcare professionals.

In the Philippines, the Informatics Nurses Society of the Philippines has been leading in the development and advancement of nursing informatics through local and international linkages and collaboration. However, there is a need to standardize the contents of the course being implemented by nursing schools. Theoretical concepts and practical applications should be aligned so that it may be applicable to the Philippine setting. 

In this regard, the concept of nursing informatics needs to be concretized in the Nursing curriculum so that trained faculty members and instructors in the Colleges of Nursing appropriately handle both the lecture and laboratory component of the course. More so, nursing informatics need to be integrated to the realms of nursing education, practice and research. Thus, PMIS-NI is created to translate these ideas into reality.

The Philippine Medical Informatics Society(PMIS) and its founders had stronginfluence inthe development of health informatics inthe Philippines. The PMIA was officiallyregisteredunder the Securities and ExchangeCommission in 1996 by its boardcomposed of elevenphysician. The organization was headedby Dr. Alvin Marcelo.

References:

www.himss.org/ResourceLibrary/ResourceDetail.aspx itemNumber=11825Nurseslabs.com/informatics-nurses-society-of-the-Philippines-inures-sp/http://nurseslabs.com/informatics-nurses-society-of-the-philippines-inurse-sp/http://www.himss.org/resourcelibrary/TopicList.aspx?MetaDataID=767 2016 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)http://www.himss.org/product-and-service-directory 

THANK YOU‼