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. Collectively IMIA academic members need to be in a good position to respond to the global changes in higher education and minimise the risk of failure when establishing a virtual University to collectively deliver Health Informatics education. Others have undertaken a similar path in the past, some successful others not so, we need to learn from these experiences

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 informatìcs education framework will facilitate us to meet these needs. This chapter provides an overview of a considerable amount of work undertaken in a number of countries and by IMIA's health and medical informatics education working group. We need to make good use of these foundations as they clarify the various health informatics roles and functions together with their associated health informatics competency requirements. We are now in a good position to progress this work by developing a health informatics qualifications and educational framework. This is expected to assist educational providers with curriculum development

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 adoptio

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 system

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 objective

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. Central Queensland University (CQU), one of these members, is also working with the Health Level Seven (HL7) organisation to provide specific standards education internationally using flexible delivery methods. Results: A number of issues requiring further exploration and resolutions have been identified. An overview of these is provided

Information and infrastructure requirements to measure outcomes

There is an emerging trend worldwide toward outcome measurement as a means of demonstrating the value of health services provided. There are a number of issues associated with this. A variety of events and circumstances may influence outcomes, such as pre existing conditions, timing of health service delivery, general health status on admission together with processes of service delivery, interventions initiated, the quality of services provided by a variety of health professionals and support staff. In addition there are definitional issues, data structures, coding and classification issues, computing, information and communication technological issues, privacy issues, the need for standards and benchmarks. This paper identifies health outcomes research efforts, and initiatives undertaken to resolve some of these issues. The paper argues that unless nursing data are included in national statistical data collections nursing’s contribution to healthcare will remain largely invisible. It concludes by examining nursing’s contribution towards the development of an international unified nursing language and classification system needed to achieve this aim

Nursing classification and terminology systems

A number of terminologies exist that represent concepts of relevance to nurses, although none of these is in use by Australian nurses. Without consensus, nursing language and definitions incorporated in clinical information systems now being implemented will continue to vary considerably. The result will be an inability to compare nursing practice, or to aggregate data for research purposes, or to collect national statistical data to demonstrate the significance of nurses' contributions to health care. This article provides an international historical overview of nursing terminology developments relative to what is happening in Australia, brief reviews of the many available nursing terminologies, an update of this work relative to activities being undertaken towards the development and adoption of standards, and a discussion about desirable future research and development activities

Research and evidence-based practice

The application of evidence-based practice is dependant upon one’s ability to correctly interpret research studies and their findings as well as the ability to locate the most appropriate evidence to suit the area of practice. Both research and evidence-based practice are complex topics that may be explored or described from various perspectives. This chapter provides an overview of these issues from a health informatics perspective

Queensland Health - PAIS validation study : results and issues for nursing cost capture

Following a commitment made in December 1993 by a previous Minister for Health with the Queensland Nurses Union to implement Patient Nurse Dependency Systems (PNDS) in Queensland hospitals, fifteen hospitals have implemented the McDonnel Information System PAIS based PNDS which is the corporate system. The remaining seven, from the greater than 100 beds hospitals eligible for inclusion in the Queensland Health PND project, have elected to continue to use an alternative PNDS called TRENDCARE. One component ofthe PNDS Implementation Project was to validate and review the PAIS standard time values. This paper will cover the results of a study conducted to validate and review the PAIS standard time values using the same work sampling methodology orginally developed and used by the author to develop and validate PAIS during 1981182. This recent study was conducted during July and August 1995 in nineteen medical/surgical and maternity wards, in eight hospitals across five Queensland Regional Health Authorities. These sites were selected as a representative sample following an analysis of a 72 item Organisational Factors Questionnaire