The Role of Healthcare Leaders in Implementing and Integrating Informatics in Health Care

Informatics is a technological advancement that presents opportunities to the healthcare industry. Health informatics integrates healthcare, information, cognitive, and computer sciences for proper healthcare information management (Sweeney, 2017). Healthcare informatics presents feasible solutions to healthcare issues that lead to better health outcomes and high-quality care. Accordingly, healthcare leaders are critical in implementing and integrating informatics into the organizational culture. Firstly, healthcare leaders should prioritize informatics competencies to implement technology-enabled solutions effectively (Hussey et al., 2015). In this regard, informatics competencies refer to ethical and legal issues, IT principles, medical technology or management, and systems life cycle management (Morawski, n.d.). Secondly, healthcare leaders should facilitate staff training to familiarize caregivers with these competencies. Thirdly, healthcare leaders should promote collaboration among multidisciplinary teams to enable the successful implementation of healthcare informatics. For instance, they should ensure positive relationships between nurse informaticists and other multidisciplinary team members. Besides, nurse informaticists are knowledgeable in informatics; therefore, other caregivers would learn much from them.

References

Hussey, P., Adams, E., & Shaffer, F. A. (2015). Nursing informatics and leadership, an essential competency for a global priority: EHealth. Nurse Leader, 13(5), 52–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2015.07.002.