Alliance for Nursing Informatics Responds to Formation of the Google Health Council

[rnformatics]

The Alliance for Nursing Informatics has weighed in on the issue of no nurses being included on the Google Health Advisory Council.

Originally Posted by The Alliance for Nursing Informatics

Dear Missy Krasner,

The Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI) is a collaboration of organizations that represent a unified voice for nursing informatics. ANI represents more than 4,000 nurses and brings together 23 distinct nursing informatics groups in the United States. ANI crosses educational, geographic, and nursing specialty boundaries and works in collaboration with the more than 2 millions nurses in practice today. As such, the feedback below offers a nursing perspective on the problems consumers and providers face every day and provides feedback from nurses on product ideas and development.

ANI is delighted to hear that Google announced the formation of the Google Health Advisory Council on June 27, 2007. The stated purpose of this council is to "broadly help us [Google] better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development." It is with this purpose that we would like to make two recommendations: 1) Append your council representation to include one or more members from the nursing profession and 2) consider healthcare consumers and providers within the international community as Google’s reach and tools have certainly become global.

Nurses constitute the largest single group of health care workers and have a long tradition of serving as both patient advocates as well as patient educators. Nurses serve as advocates by taking on the unique responsibility of addressing how disease or disability affects the patient. A review of nursing practice standards as well as our practice’s nomenclature will reveal our unique specialization in understanding how to help patients deal with the consequences and effects of disease. Nurses also perform the vast majority of patient/consumer teaching and health education. Nursing educational curriculum focuses on patient teaching methods and skills, which are integral to the role of a registered professional nurse in all healthcare settings. There is probably no other profession more competent in healthcare information and knowledge management, both in terms of research and educational theory. Nurses practice daily at the point of care and truly understand what people want and need to know about their healthcare. They effectively deliver that care and follow-up on its effectiveness, all over the world at every hour of every day.

For specific recommendations of nurses to serve on the Google Health Advisory Council, please contact either of the ANI co-chairs Carole A. Gassert, RN, PhD, FACMI, FAAN or Joyce Sensmeier MS, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS at the contact information listed below.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Carole and Joyce

Carole A. Gassert, RN, PhD, FACMI, FAAN
ANI Co-chair (AMIA representative)
4915 St. Elmo Avenue, Suite 401
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-657-1291
301-657-1296
E-mail: carole.gassert@nurs.utah.edu

Joyce Sensmeier MS, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS

ANI Co-chair (HIMSS representative)
230 E. Ohio Street
Chicago, IL 60611
312-664-4467
312-664-6143
E-mail: jsensmeier@himss.org