Nursing practice and education continue to integrate information and communication technologies to improve care delivery through better decision-making leveraging informatics and other technologies like electronic health records (Hailegebreal et al., 2022). Health information technologies (HIT) and nursing informatics (NI) define the technology revolution shaping care delivery as it allows nurses to optimize patient care. The purpose of this paper is to discuss information and communication technology tools in nursing care for patients, communities, and health populations.
Health information technologies play a critical role in healthcare evolution. The increased cost of care, economic aspects, and an aging baby boomer population continue to exert pressure on healthcare provision leading to the use of innovative approaches through health information technologies (HIT). Health informatics or health information technology management emerged when computer technology became sophisticated enough to handle large amounts of data emanating from patient health information. The roots of health information technology can be traced to the 1920s when health providers began using medical records to document patient details, complications, and outcomes. By the 1960s, technological innovations through increased use of computers led to standardized medical records (Grimwood et al., 2020). The introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 also influenced the development of health information systems for seamless reimbursement.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, increased awareness and training led to the development of electronic health records (EHRs). The enactment of several acts like HITECH and a rise in meaningful use in the 2000s improved health technologies; making them a core part of effective care delivery today. As such, providers now leverage different health information technologies like EHR and electronic medical records (EMR) to enhance optimal care delivery. The HITECH Act authorized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish incentives for hospitals to adopt health information technologies, especially EHR, to improve care delivery. More legislations like the MACRA Act and the Affordable Care Act in 2010 aimed at improving the use of HIT to enhance access to quality and affordable care for millions of Americans.
Nursing informatics as a specialty area emerged in the 1950s based on the integration of nursing science, computer science, and information systems to improve care delivery. Nursing informatics is a specialty that has evolved from mechanical ventilators in intensive care units (ICUs) to computer-based information systems (CIS) (Randine et al., 2022). The evolution also entailed the digitalization of health records through hospital information systems and a rise in interoperability. Today, nursing informatics and HIT are at the core of better health delivery for diverse patient populations based on the concept of interconnected healthcare.
The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) (2024) asserts that health IT is part of informatics and enables better care delivery by offering tools for nurses to set knowledge in motion. The association asserts that informatics entails different areas of practice for providers and organizations. These include translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, clinical informatics, consumer health informatics, and public health informatics. Consumer health informatics is one area that is most applicable to daily nursing practice. According to AMIA, consumer health informatics emanates from multiple patient or consumer perspectives and includes patient-focused informatics, health literacy, and education. Accordingly, this area empowers consumers so that they can manage their health through health information literacy, personal health records, and Internet-based resources. At the core of this view of informatics is the consumer need for information, and studying and implementing ways to make it accessible to patients (AMIA, 2024). As such, it is relevant to nursing practices because it integrates nursing informatics, health promotion, health education, and public health. Nurses require these aspects in clinical settings and when dealing with diverse populations to enhance wellness and application of information to
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