It is always gratifying to have one's thoughts and ideas confirmed by others, especially in an international setting. In early July, I was fortunate to attend the 13th International Congress in Nursing Informatics (NI2016-http://ni2016.org/). It was a marvelous experience, with opportunities to visit with old friends, make new friends, and learn about the latest research on Connected Care.
The meetings took place under the purview of the International Medical Informatics Association's Nursing Informatics Special Interest Group (NI-SIG). IMIA is an association of associations from various countries and the world body for health and biomedical informatics. The Congress typically takes place every few years and is held in various countries. In the early days, the intent was to jumpstart the discipline of informatics in the host country. I have attended since 1988.
Once a country's membership is established, nursing informatics specialists are approached to be a part of the NI-SIG, whose goal is to foster collaboration among nurses and interested others to facilitate development in the field. The overall aim is to share knowledge, experience, and ideas with nurses and health care providers worldwide about the practice of nursing informatics and the benefits of enhanced information management. The NI-SIG has been in existence since 1982, and there are currently 29 member countries. For the past four years, I have served as the US country representative.
eHEALTH FOR ALL
The theme of the 13th International Congress was "eHealth for All: Every Level Collaboration From Project to Realization." Opening remarks were given by several dignitaries, including the Minister of Health Geneva, the CEO of the International Council of Nursing, World Health Organization representatives, and ehealth directors. Connected Health, Big Data, and Interoperability were common themes in nearly 400 paper's, poster, and panel presentations and six keynote addresses.
Carmen Laplaza Santos, deputy head of unit health and well-being, DG Communications Networks, Content, and Technology, presented her keynote on deploying ehealth, with nurses as essential partners. She described the health ecosystem and the need for nurses to be part of ehealth initiatives. Santos showed a brief video (https://youtu.be/_i5yfhLeRoI), which introduced us to ENS4Care: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Nurses and Social Care Workers for the Deployment of eHealth Services (http://www.ens4care.eu/).
Another keynote address was delivered by Judy Murphy, chief nursing officer, IBM Global Healthcare, on behalf of Dr. Marilyn Chow, vice president, National Patient Care Services and Innovation, Kaiser Permanente, who was unable to attend. The title was "Reimagining Care Delivery: The Power of Nursing Informatics." International Council of Nursing CEO Dr. Frances Hughes spoke on "The Power of Data for Change." Dave deBronkart (aka e-Patient Dave), spoke on "How e-Patients Are Changing Health Care." Christian Lovis, professor of clinical informatics at the University of Geneva and the Geneva University Hospitals, presented on "Big Data and Health: Hopes and Challenges."
My favorite keynote, "e-Health: Global Nursing for Global Citizen," was presented by Heimar de Fatima Marin, director of the Graduate Program in Health Informatics at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP), who reminded us that "caring for people will never be obsolete." Several of the keynote presentations are available on the NI2016 website (http://ni2016.org/power-point-presentations/). All congress proceedings are accessible at IOS Press (http://ebooks.iospress.nl/ISBN/978-1-61499-658-3).
CONTESTS AND COMPETITIONS
Two new events at the congress were the Wearable Fashion Show and the Student Design contest. The fashion show demonstrated how far we have come in wearable devices as well as smart shirts and smart shoes. The Internet of Things has opened the door to many products that promote health and wellness while monitoring and providing guidance.
The Student Design Contest was phenomenal. The purpose was to encourage collaborative teams to develop and share innovative ideas in wearable or ubiquitous technologies to promote mobile-health, connected health, or ubiquitous computing in health care. The goal was to allow the next generation of interprofessional collaborative teams to showcase how technologies can transform nursing and health care. I had the privilege to chair the student design committee and work with an extraordinary team of educators from across the globe: Drs. Leanne Currie, University of British Columbia; Heimar Marin, Federal University of Sao Paulo; Ursula Hertha Hubner, Hochschule Onsabruck-University of Applied Sciences; Manuela Eicher, Universite de Lausanne; and Ying (Helen) Wu, Capital Medical University.
Our committee created the criteria to assess the project. On the basis of the initial proposals submitted in January 2015, eight projects were selected to move forward. Student teams could originate from one or two universities and needed to have at least one health care professional. Six teams submitted an update in September 2015 and also submitted a paper or abstract of their project for the conference proceedings. Final judging took place at the Congress. Funding was provided to award one international award and one for a Swiss entry. Here are the brilliant projects.
The Switzerland award winner was a team from two institutions: Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, and the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (Christopher Moufawad el Achkar, Constanze Lenoble-Hoskovec, Kristof Major, Anisoara Paraschiv-Ionescu, Christophe Bula, and Kamiar Aminian). The team designed smart shoes for use with elderly patients, embedding transmitters into the inner soles of shoes. A small device (Bluetooth module) attached to the shoes transmits data to a smartphone. The detailed data activity monitoring can be used for the measurement of mobility, fall risk assessment, and fall prevention.
The international prize was shared by two projects. The first, Hygiene Games, was designed by a team from Germany: FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences and RWTH Aachen University (Frederic Klein, Cassandra Severuns, Daniela Albiez, Eugen Seljutin, Marko Jovanovic, and Milad Eyvaz Hesar). The purpose is to support the enhancement of hand hygiene on hospital wards by placing sensors near sinks, sanitary hand dispensers, and glove storage boxes in patients' rooms. The system applies a gaming feature to incentivize proper hand hygiene while maintaining privacy and usability. The students brought a working example of the system for all to see.
The second prize was for a delirium assessment project by a team of students and faculty from two universities: School of Nursing, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China, and the Institute of Biomedical Informatics, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan (Fangyu Yang, Meihua Ji, Shu Ding, Ying Wu, Polun Chang, Chiawei Lin, and Xin Yang). The purpose was to create an app based on the Confusion Assessment Model for intensive care unit patients. The app incorporates an automatic risk factor identification and a personalized delirium care planning component for bedside nurses.
The Individual Nomad Clinical Assistant was developed as a baccalaureate project by a team from the School of Landscape, Engineering, and Architecture, Geneva, and the Division of Medical Information Sciences, University Hospitals of Geneva (Yvann Argentin, Florent Gluck, Christain Lovis, and Frederic Ehrler). The app provides nurses with vital patient information and specific nursing interventions at the point of care. Using their smartphones, nurses can enter comments and validate their interventions as they deliver care, greatly facilitating documentation.
A team of students from the University of British Columbia (Dawood Al-Masslawi, Lori Block, and Charlene Ronquillo) designed a mobile app that uses speech recognition techniques and a camera for community health nurses to document wound care when doing home visits. The students used a participatory design technique to develop the prototype, which will be tested for feasibility and usefulness using simulated home visits.
Another Swiss team from the University Hospital of Geneva, the University of Applied Sciences-HEG, Pediatric Emergency Division, Children's Hospital University, and the Division of Medical Information Science (Hamdi Hagberg, Johan Siebert, Alain Gervaix, Peter Daehne, Christian Lovis, Sergio Manzano, and Frederic Ehrler) designed an app for nurses to calculate drug doses during pediatric resuscitation procedures. The app presents a list of drugs, and the nurse enters the child's weight. The app calculates the proper dosage.
GOING FORWARD
It was extremely invigorating to see the talents of our next generation of engineers and informatics specialists from across the globe. I feel confident that the discipline will continue to grow and thrive, and hope that, with our interprofessional support, American nursing students will work with engineers and computer scientists to generate the next great idea for the NI2020 Congress.
At this Congress, I was encouraged to see the large number of student papers and posters, a good indicator that the discipline of informatics has a bright future ahead. I would particularly like to mention the Student Working Group of the IMIA NI-SIG, established several years ago to engage the next generation of nursing informaticians. One of our goals at IMIA NI-SIG will be to grow the number of student participants from each of the 29 member countries.
One recent accomplishment of the Student Working Group was an international survey on nursing informatics research priorities for the future. The survey was translated into six different languages, and responses were received from 31 countries. Students made recommendations for education and training, research, practice, visibility of nursing informatics, collaboration, and integration. The results were quite interesting, and the group was adept at developing both poster and paper presentations of the study.
Each time I attend a Congress, I am in awe of the work being done in various countries and the brilliant projects presented by the upcoming generation of new informatics specialists. I am extremely humbled to now serve as the chair of the IMIA NI-SIG for the next four years. I am extremely grateful to the previous chair, Lucy Westbrooke (telehealth programme manager, Auckland District Health Board, New Zealand), who served as my mentor and will continue to help me navigate the international waters. I am supported by a great executive team: Patrick Weber (Switzerland), vice chair for finance and administration; Dr. Kaija Saranto (Finland), vice chair for working groups; Dr. Ann Kristin Rotegard (Norway), vice chair of communication; and Dr. Sayonara Barbosa (Brazil), vice chair of membership. All are leaders in informatics, not only in their home countries but across the globe. So, if you are looking to become more involved in the informatics community on an international level, the International Congress in Nursing Informatics is the conference to attend. As always, feel free to contact me at mailto:[email protected].