Please join us in welcoming two new members to the ANI Steering Committee. Ragnhildur (Raga) Bjarnadottir, PhD, MPH, RN, and Karen Dunn Lopez, PhD, MPH, are the newest members of the ANI steering committee.
Raga joins us as the new ANI policy co-coordinator to work alongside Sarah Collins and is an assistant professor at the University of Florida (UF) College of Nursing. Her research is focused on maximizing the use of health informatics and data science to improve patient safety and quality of care. More specifically, she uses text mining and predictive analytics to identify factors related to healthcare-acquired conditions in nurses' progress notes and examines ways of using these factors to support nurses at the bedside through clinical decision support. Raga holds a PhD in nursing from Columbia University School of Nursing and was a postdoctoral fellow at UF College of Nursing and Informatics Institute. She received her BSN from the University of Iceland and her master of public health degree from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Raga was selected as one of six AAN Jonas Policy Scholars in 2017, and her research has been recognized and awarded by the Academy of Health Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues. In addition to her research, she teaches applied statistics, nursing informatics, and health policy to DNP students at UF College of Nursing.
As the policy co-coordinator, Raga will serve as a member of the steering committee and will be responsible for working with Sarah in identifying opportunities where ANI can mobilize its members to respond to opportunities that support and encourage nursing informatics participation in policy activities. Raga can be reached by e-mail at mailto:[email protected].
Karen Dunn Lopez, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing, Department of Health Systems Science. She has expertise in clinical decision support and use of standardized nursing terminologies contained in electronic health record (EHR) documentation.
Karen's research with clinicians includes developing and testing decision support aids that are useful and usable and enable the delivery of evidence-based nursing care, heuristic reviews of health information technologies (ambulatory care EHR modules and sepsis alerts), and a longitudinal study that identified increased cognitive workload and decreased usability over 2 years following a new EHR implementation.
As the ANI Xcertia Board Member, Karen will serve on the Xcertia Board and identify opportunities where ANI can mobilize its members to respond to opportunities that support and encourage nursing informatics participation in their workgroup activities. Karen can be reached by e-mail at mailto:[email protected]. She also serves on the ANI Governing Directors as a representative for MNRS. Karen will report back and communicate with ANI as needed on Xcertia activities and needs.