Nursing knowledge: Big Data Science Conference
In 2013, the University of Minnesota School of Nursing initiated a conference to develop a National Action Plan, bringing together diverse stakeholders to create a common vision for implementing and effectively using sharable and comparable nurse-generated and contextual data. The vision is to have better health through inclusion of standardized nursing data integrated with other health professions. Data is from electronic health records (EHRs) and other information systems. Reuse of EHR and other data for quality improvement and research can lead to breakthroughs for individual, family, community, and population health.
At the third annual Nursing Knowledge: Big Data Science conference, held June 3–5, 2015, presenters reported the results of 10 projects influencing the creation and use of sharable and comparable nursing data. The projects involved nurses from practice, academia, research, industry, and professional organizations. The conference proceedings, soon to be published, will include all conference activities as well as recommendations for 2015-2016 projects that will evolve through collaborative work over this next year. For further information, all presentations from the 2013, 2014, and 2015 conferences can be found on the UMN’s School of Nursing website.
Key messages from this conference include:
- “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” As this African proverb suggests, this conference is about going together.
- In 1992, Norma Lang wrote about nursing, “If we cannot name it, we cannot control it, teach it, finance it, research it, or put it into public policy.” We now need to move beyond naming nursing and implement one or more of the nursing terminologies recognized by the American Nurses Association and do so in consistent, efficient ways to streamline documentation and create reusable data for quality improvement and research.
- According to an ANA Position Statement (March 19, 2015): “When creating clinical data warehouses for comparative effectiveness research or exchanging a Consolidated Continuity of Care Document (C-CDA), including problems and interventions, with another setting, Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine–Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT®) and Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC®) should be used. LOINC should be used for coding nursing assessments and outcomes, and SNOMED CT for problems, interventions, and observation findings.”
- To ensure quality, safety, and value in healthcare, clinical decisions need to be supported by accurate, timely, and up-to-date clinical information.
- The documentation burden must be reduced by providing information in the EHR at the right time in the workflow to support evidence-based and personalized care.
- Healthcare organizations should employ nurse informaticists, who can provide valuable insight into concept representation, design, implementation, and optimization of health IT to support evidence-based practice, research, and education.
- To achieve the desired outcomes, nurse informaticists should have formal informatics education and certification.
- Engage nursing leaders to understand and advance the importance of data science to evidence-informed nursing practice to achieve the triple aim of better health, better experience, and better efficiency of healthcare.
- Develop new nursing business intelligence and analytic tools that will take advantage of the rich clinical, operational, financial, and quality/safety outcome data currently available to measure and compare nursing value.
- Engage nurses in health IT policy.
In summary, the national action plan with associated projects is moving nursing forward to have sharable and comparable data to demonstrate the value of nursing in collaboration with interprofessional colleagues. You are encouraged to support this effort. Plan to attend the next conference Jun 1-3, 2016 and join the conversation using #NursingandBigData or https://twitter.com/UMNNursing. Also, feel free to reach out or share via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
