How Apps Affect Nursing

¶ … Evolution of Nursing and Healthcare Informatics

Those working in the field of healthcare delivery have long recognized the importance of obtaining and recording accurate data during their course of their interaction with a patient, from the physical examination recorded by nursing staff to the administration of precise dosages by primary care physicians. For centuries, doctors the world over all shared a relatively reliable, yet admittedly simplistic method of storing and accessing this vital medical information: a paper chart, pencil, and clipboard. While scrawling a diagnostic conjecture or the result of blood test on a patient's "official" medical record sufficed until the dawn of the computing age, with the advent of mainframe databases in the early 1960s, digital data storage in the late 1990s, and cloud computing today, the concept of healthcare informatics has emerged to enable nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers to efficiently gather crucial data and make accurate interpretations to effect positive patient outcomes (Hebda & Czar, 2009). Today, a growing consensus has developed among providers and patients alike which holds that "health information management (HIM) professionals are facing an unprecedented opportunity to help shape the future, not only of health information management, but also of healthcare delivery" (Abdelhak, Grostick & Hanken, 2012). Before one can take advantage of the enormous benefits afforded by a health informatics system, however, first it is necessary to become familiarized with the history and evolution of health informatics, both from a theoretical and practical standpoint.

When the general public was introduced to the concept of mainframe computing in the 1960's, many industries including healthcare delivery soon began to utilize the new technology as a convenient way to quickly store and retrieve ever increasing amounts of data. Throughout the 60s and 70s, computers were used much as the bulky filing cabinets they replaced, simply providing permanent storage for the continual stream of statistics, dosages, interactions, and other information generated throughout the span of a patient's stay, and indeed, during the course of their entire life. According to literature reviews on the subject of healthcare informatics' evolution from theory to standard practice, "a gradual change from electronic data processing in health, through the use of informatics in medical care, to health informatics, is discernible from papers presented at the World Congresses on Medical Informatics, which began in Stockholm in 1974" (Cesnik, 1996). This change began with the software revolution of the 80s, as computer users began to explore the potential previously locked within their machines, creating languages and coding systems that could then be exploited by particular industries. By this point, nurses and doctors had become familiarized with the many benefits afforded by computerized data storage, but they still lacked the interpretive capabilities needed to enhance diagnostic processes, develop innovative treatments, and improve patient outcomes. The advent of coding allowed for the formation of customizable tools designed by healthcare providers for use in the hospital setting, and the differentiation between health information and health informatics began to crystallize. Doctors and nursing professionals like Virginia Saba, Rita Zeilstorff, and Judy Ozbol have since worked tirelessly to combine their resources and energy to advocate for the implementation of healthcare informatics systems throughout all major hospitals, community clinics, and private practices, forming the American Medical Informatics Association in 1993 and holding worldwide conferences to spread awareness of the practice to developing nations.