Virginia K. Saba, EdD, DS, RN, FAAN, FACMI, a nursing informatics pioneer, died on November 20, 2021, after a brief illness. Saba started her journey in the field of informatics as coding supervisor of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study on the perinatal experiences of 50,000 pregnant women. Her early work laid the foundation for her mission to ensure that nursing data could be used to make nursing care visible-an interest that inspired her to earn a master's degree in computer science and a doctoral degree in the science of technology management information from American University in Washington, DC.
Over more than four decades, Saba made significant contributions to developing the discipline of nursing informatics. Notably, she developed the Clinical Care Classification (CCC) System, a nursing terminology and coding system that facilitated the documentation of nursing plans of care. She was instrumental in establishing many conferences and events, including a major NIH conference on computers and nursing and the first nursing sessions at the Fifth Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC), both in 1981. She also helped form the first SCAMC special interest group for nurses in 1981, now known as the American Medical Informatics Association Nursing Informatics Special Interest Group, which she chaired from 2001 to 2004, and the first Council on Computer Applications in Nursing at the American Nurses Association in 1986.
Saba had a long, exemplary academic career as a professor and Distinguished Scholar at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies in Washington, DC, and as a professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. A prolific author, she wrote, along with Kathleen McCormick, one of the first nursing informatics textbooks, Essentials of Computers for Nurses. She was a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the American Academy of Nursing, which named her a Living Legend in 2002. She also received several honorary degrees. Prior to her death, Saba was chief executive officer and president of SabaCare Inc.-Diane J. Skiba, PhD, FACMI, ANEF, FAAN