Westcliff University Nursing Informatics Discussion Questions

You have just been hired as a clinical informatics leader for a new health system. The health system has 23 acute care facilities and 36 outpatient clinics. It serves as a regional referral center for three states within a region of your choice. (Example, Northwest, Southwest, Northcentral, Southcentral, Northeast, Southeast). Your installed base includes a vendor-supplied EHR from a national vendor. Work on the data warehouse is being rethought. Your site has more than 300 varying applications across sites, including everything from a stand-alone pharmacy application for drug interactions to a cancer registry. Your goal is to provide IT support for the organizational vision of being the premier health organization in patient safety for the region. Your goal is also to provide predictive analytics for patient care for your ICUs. One of the first things you want to do is to plan for the future of IT. Explore the following questions and other questions you deem central to the future development of Healthcare Informatics as you expand on your plan:

1. Given the future directions, select the two directions you want to emphasize. Provide rationale for your choices, and how you can use methodologies from futures research to plan for your preferred future with the future directions you selected.

2. Using futures research methods, identify how you think nanotechnology might impact both health IT and health informatics.

3. You want to increase collaborative work with a local university. What future directions for education do you think are most important as CIO?

Add any vital data relevant to the region of choice and current references from the Health IT and Informatics literature and the industry that is foundational to your plan.