Nursing Informatics

~ as defined by the American Nurse Association (ANA),is a specialty that integrates nursing science,computer science and information science to manage and communicate data,information and knowledge in nursing practice. Nursing informatics facilitates the integration of data,  information and knowledge to support patients, nurses and other providers in their decision-making in all roles and settings. This support is accomplished through the use of information technology and information structures, which organize data, information and knowledge for processing by computers.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Nursing Informatics

  Advantages:

• shared data;
• centralized control;
• disadvantages of redundancy control;
• improved data integrity;
• improved data security,and database systems; and,
• flexible conceptual design. 

Disadvantages:

• a complex conceptual design process;
• the need for multiple external databases;
• the need to hire database-related employees;
• high DBMS acquisition costs;
• a more complex programmer environment;
• potentially catastrophic program failures;
• a longer running time for individual applications; and,
• highly dependent DBMS operations.