HDM Accepting Entries for Nursing Information Technology Innovation Award

[rnformatics]

HDM Accepting Entries for Nursing I.T. Award

The Nursing Information Technology Innovation Award will be presented to a team of nursing professionals at a U.S. health care organization (hospital, physician group practice or any other care-giving site). The award recognizes innovation and excellence in using information technology in the field of nursing to directly improve the quality of care/patient safety and/or promote the effective use of nursing resources.

The award is sponsored by Health Data Management magazine, the Maryland Technology Committee and the Capitol Area Roundtable on Informatics in Nursing.

The deadline for entry is Jan. 5, 2007.

At least one of the primary coordinators of the I.T. project must be a nurse. The project must be ongoing.

To qualify for this award, a health care organization must submit an essay as described below. The essay must include detailed information on the nursing information technology project and the specific results of that project. The contribution of a nurse(s) to the innovative project must be clearly identified.

The team of judges for this award include: nurses from the Maryland Technology Committee and CARING who are directly involved in information technology in health care; a nurse informaticist from Newark, Del.-based Christiana Hospital, last year’s award winner; and Greg Gillespie, editorial director of Health Data Management. Judges will interview finalists by phone before determining the award recipient. The winner will be notified Jan. 29.

The winning team members must be available to be interviewed for a cover story in the April issue of Health Data Management before Feb. 15, 2007. The award winner agrees to keep the results confidential until April 1, 2007.

Instructions for Entering


Please create an electronic document. At the top, list the following

• Name of organization and address
• Description of size of organization (total physicians, total inpatient licensed beds, etc.)
• Name of key nurse(s) involved in the project, and their roles.
• Name of person who prepared the nomination and contact information (phone and e-mail)
• Name of senior executive with organization who could be available to answer questions, and contact information.

Please prepare an essay with a maximum of 1,000 words answering the following four questions:

1. What is the nursing I.T. project that is worthy of recognition? Precisely identify the technology involved.
2. What is innovative/groundbreaking about the project?

3. What are the specific results/outcomes of the project? Examples of results can include:

• Achieving tangible improvements in the quality of care (better
outcomes, reduced length of stay, fewer medication errors, etc).
• Reducing the time nurses spend on non-care activities by automating tasks, such as searching for information in patient charts or coordinating care.
• Improving workload management through telehealth technologies and other systems.
• Helping nurses with reassignment to non-familiar care areas by offering innovative online education programs.
• Balancing nurses’ demands of home and work life by using Web-based scheduling/staffing systems.

4. Describe the contribution of nurse(s) to the project. Was the nurse(s) the project leader, product manager, trainer, implementer, executive sponsor, etc.?

Please submit your entry by Jan. 5, 2007 via e-mail only, as an attached document to: greg.gillespie@sourcemedia.com. For questions, contact the same e-mail address.

For more information on the Maryland Technology Committee, visit http://maryland.nursetech.com/. For more information on the Capitol Area Roundtable on Informatics in Nursing, access www.caringonline.org.