EFMI Chair, United Kingdon, Switzerland

Report of activities to EFMI Council
For the period July 2005 to April 2006
Presented on April 5th 2005, EFMI Council meeting, Timisoara
by Patrick Weber, Chairman of the working group
Email: patrick.weber@nicecomputing.ch

Selection of members

Today 13 country members and 7 associate members compose our group.

Vice president and secretary

Thanks to
Dr Thomas Buerkle elected as vice-chair
Mrs .Janette Bennett elected as secretary

Objectives of the group

- To support nurses and nursing organizations in the European countries with information and contacts and the field of informatics
- To offer nurses opportunities to build contact networks within the informatics field. This could be accomplished by arranging sessions, workshops and tutorials in connection with the Medical Informatics European (MIE) conferences or by arranging separate meetings.
- To support the education of nurses with respect to informatics and computing.
- To support research and developmental work in the field and promote publishing of achieved results.

Recent activities

- August 2005 Geneva CH MIE2005: Active participation of many members for scientific presentations, workshops.
- November 2005 Zürich CH ENI2005 European Nursing informatics conference where members had active participation in scientific presentations.
- Together with editors from US, New Zealand and Europe the book "Nursing and Informatics for the 21st Century: an international look at practice, trends and the future" is available June 1st 2006.

Patrick Weber April 2006

Country Report United Kingdom
Nursing Informatics Activities
2006

Health Informatics, and certainly nursing informatics, has had an increasing profile within the UK this year. Government is investing billions of pounds in developing ICT within the National Health Services to ensure modernisation and utilisation of e-health becomes a reality. All four countries now have national programmes for ICT. In England it is called NHS Connecting for Health, Wales Informing Healthcare, Scotland has the e-Health programme and Northern Ireland has the HPSS ICT programme. It would be impossible to provide a comprehensive list of activities and so I have provided a these www sites below, and more at the end which may be of interest.

England - www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk

Wales - www.wales.nhs.uk/ihc

Scotland - www.ehealth.scot.nhs.uk

Northern Ireland - www.dhsspsni.gov.uk

The British Computer Society Health Informatics Nursing Specialist Group hosted a number of events in the year, all of which were well attended. Speakers included all the nursing clinical leads for the National Programme for IT at NHS connecting for health and Sean Brennan - a well known UK authority on electronic records. In addition several members have participated in workshops and presented at major UK and international conferences; March HI2006 at Harrogate, May WWW2006 in Edinburgh and in June 12 members participated in NI2006 in Korea. Also taking place in Korea was the publication of international Nursing Informatics text by Charlotte Weaver etc (eds) with BCS members well represented as chapter/ case study authors

This year Viglen are sponsoring the BCSHI NSG Dame Phyllis Friend Award and will be presenting a laptop computer to the winner along with the DPFA prize money, more details on the web site, essays to be in by end of October 2006.

There is to be a new BCS produced HI journal/ magazine - working through the details on NSG involvement. In the meantime an NSG newsletter is being published with Nick Hardiker as editor.

BCS itself is being very active in the informatics professionalism arena, with the President - Charles Hughes involved with the UK government Cabinet Office in the creation of an informatics education programme and career structure, however what this means for health informatics and nursing is as yet unclear. The health sub group at the Cabinet Office is led by Katie Davis.

Scotland hosted the Resourcing Global Health conference in Glasgow Caledonian University from 7th to 9th June 2006, and there are plans for a joint BCS NSG/HIScotland event 24th November in Glasgow (Glasgow Caledonian University) : details will follow

Wales have established eNWI - electronic Nursing Welsh Informatics group, holding an event in July with several more planned for September and November. The group includes members from the Welsh Informing Healthcare programme.

England & UK wide

The increased interest in health informatics has resulted in new features in the nursing press:

Nursing Standard: a monthly column (350 word) will be dedicated to e-Health under the 'Reflection' section of the journal. The main aim is to highlight a possible gap between IT rhetoric and the reality at the grass root. Stories from 'real nurses' about challenges, success and celebration of nursing and e-Health are needed. Each writer will get £30 and his/her name in print.

Nursing Standards also recently published a useful feature entitled Information Governance and Record Keeping. It is an up-to-date resource which refers to a recently published code of practice for record management (England). This code is available on http://www.dh.gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidanceArticle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4131747&chk=tMmN39
There is a developing NHS-Higher Education Forum looking at ways of linking HE into the NHS network and vice versa, no results as yet. http://www.nhs-he.org.uk/forum.html

Also, the is the new NHS Health Informatics Advisory Board on which sits an NSG member quote: The faculty will act as a national focal point for the study and facilitation of informatics learning and research on behalf of the National Health Service, working with partners including further and higher education institutions on related interests.
http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/news/faculty.html

As mentioned previously there is a lot of things happening so if you would like more detail please follow the web addresses below

St Albans and Region Primary Care Education (STARPACE): Inter-practice patient record transfer using CD roms. A new initiative, including a protocol, for the transfer of patients' electronic medical records when they move between practices. http://www.starpace.co.uk/page.asp?pageID=97
Health Informatics Community: Interview: What's happening in Health Informatics? With Di Millen, Head of Professional Development and Support within the NHS Connecting for Health Programme. http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1837&d=11&h=24&f=46&dateformat=%25o-%25b-%25h

Health Informatics Community: Video Technology to Improve Cancer Care. An innovative communication system will enable health professionals to come to conclusions on cancer cases within real time, website computing.co.uk reports. http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1845&d=11&h=24&f=46&dateformat=%25o-%25b-%25h

Health Informatics Community: NHS Broadband improves air ambulance service. One UK air ambulance service has significantly cut the amount of time it takes between getting an emergency call and becoming airborne. http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1831

Health Informatics Community: New IT Programme 'Could Save Lives' in the MoD. Medical professionals within the military are to have access to up-to-date information on their patients, thanks to the signing of a new deal. http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1826

Health Informatics Community: University launches Health Informatics Degree. In a bid to meet the needs of IT in the NHS, a Midlands university is giving its students the chance to gain a health informatics degree. http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1819

Health-EU Public Health Thematic Portal. The main objective of this thematic Portal, which is the official public health portal of the European Union, is to provide European citizens with easy access to comprehensive information on Public Health initiatives and programmes at EU level. http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/index_en.htm

NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH): New look facts and fiction page. Links to Hot Topics, Myth Busters and Frequently Asked Questions about the work of NHS Connecting for Health. http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/faq/facts_and_fiction

NHS CFH: NHS Connecting for Health corporate presentation. Designed to give an overview of NHS Connecting for Health, it can be used by anyone giving presentations about the agency and/or the National Programme for IT. http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/publications/corppres

NHS CFH: Delivering the NHS Care Records Service: Detailed and Summary Care Records. Outlines functions of these records. http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/faq/hottopic/hottopic_0503

NHS Connecting for Health: Electronic Prescription Service passes one million mark. NHS Connecting for Health's Electronic Prescription Service has now transmitted more than one million electronic prescription messages. http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/news/news150506

Janette Bennett
EFMI WG5 secretary
Senior Clinical Advisor
BT Health Executive
Fleet Olace House
7th Floor
2 Fleet Place
Holborn Viaduct
London
EC4M 7RF
United Kingdom

Annual report from Swiss Nursing Informatics Group
Patrick Weber Swiss representative at IMIA/NI-SIG and EFMI NursIE

Swiss Nursing Informatics Group is active. The present summary concerns 2005. President or secretary if needed could give more information. The website is accessible at www.swissnurse.ch (in French or German, English version not yet available). As president of the Working Group 5 Nursing Informatics Europe of EFMI (European Federation for Medical Informatics) you may find also information about Nursing Informatics of EFMI at http://www.nicecomputing.ch/nieurope.

Active participation to MIE 2005 in Geneva.

In November 2005 members of our group organize and participate at the 4rd European Nursing Informatics congress, ENI2005, in Zürich, Switzerland.

We still have three Internet groups active: network for nursing informatics, network for nursing data, and network for ICNP users group http://www.icnp.info/ (in German). Development of international classification is followed (ICF, ICNP, NIC, NOC, NANDA).
A Swiss classification called LEP (Leistung Erfassung der Pflege) is now used all over Switzerland. The purpose of this classification is to collect daily nursing activity and measure the nursing time allowing workload management in nursing. http://www.lep.ch/Language/Englishframe.htm

NURSING data project is at the end of the mandate. Reports could be found at http://www.isesuisse.ch/nursingdata/en/index.htm

Nursing at national level has representatives included in the preparation of the next generation of a Swiss DRG system. Work is important for allowing nursing activities to be taken into account for the future Casemix value.

Generally in Switzerland the collection of data is becoming very important, quality - and cost- management of the state and the insurances become more and more effective. Therefore the role of the informatics increased but also the costs for informatics.

Patrick Weber June 2006