I am at the HIMSS Conference in Atlanta, Georgia right now.  For those of you who don't know what HIMSS stands for, it is the Healthcare Information and  Management Systems Society.  This conference is one of the most cutting-edge conferences I have ever attended.  According to the HIMSS representative I spoke to, their attendance is 25,000 this year.  For those of you interested in how technology can improve practice, this conference is for you.  Nurses involved in informatics, clinical leaders, and nurse leaders presented how information management systems, electronic health care records, computerized prescriber order entry, and different types of monitoring systems can fit into workflow and give nurses the clinical support they need to deliver the highest quality, evidence-based care. What I was most impressed with was their Interoperability Showcase which used patient case studies to demonstrate how different systems can exchange information and seamlessly work together.  Many of the sessions stressed the importance of having nurses part of the decision making process when new technology is being evaluated.

It was refreshing to see healthcare institutions sending their nurse leaders, clinical leaders, and nurse informatics specialists to this conference to find ways to use technology to improve patient care.  If you're interested in how technology can improve nursing practice and improve patient outcomes, or your facility is looking at new technology, then I would highly recommend you attend this conference.

By Anne Dabrow Woods, MSN, RN, CRNP, ANP-BC