Nurses play a crucial role in health care. As Annette Kennedy, President of the International Council of Nurses says, nurses are “at the heart of the world’s current health priorities”, making up nearly half of the world’s healthcare workforce and deliver almost 80% of the hands-on care. 

Nurses are often the main clinician helping patients navigate the health system. They use critical thinking to understand and plan for the needs of the whole patient, not just their immediate medical issues.  

But as pressure on health systems around the world continues to build nurses find themselves having to do more with less. Access to high-quality, real-time patient health information can play a role in easing this pressure, with interoperable Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) representing a potential solution.

Good data helps effective care

Healthcare models are changing regularly, with technological advances and major disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic shaping the expanding role of nursing care.

As new digital tools like patient portals, telehealth, remote monitoring devices, and the digital front door develop at pace, nurses fill an important role as educators, working with patients to help them understand how to best use these tools as part of self-managing their conditions.

Well-configured analytical tools have the ability to help nurses accurately target and manage their patients, focusing on those patients whose need is greatest.

What nurses need

To support critical thinking and decision making, nurses need information that they can rely on. They need data that is trusted, readily accessible, comprehensive, is available in real time and serves as a single source of truth 

Using technological solutions to efficiently organise and present data can help support the delivery of efficient, high-quality care, as well as giving nurses some much-needed time back.

Interoperability – which is the ability of multiple systems to exchange and use health information – needs to be at the forefront when creating technological solutions to share healthcare data, which are often referred to as Health Information Exchanges (HIE). 

To learn more read our recent whitepaper, A Nurse’s perspective on interoperability.

This whitepaper offers recommendations regarding the technology capabilities best suited to meet the needs of nurses on the front lines of healthcare. It takes a look into the expanding and evolving roles of nurses and offers a glimpse into some high-value nursing use cases that helps frame the substantial benefits of the right interoperability platform and the role of Health Information Exchange (HIE).

This is the final blog in the series. If you missed out, check out the previous blogs below: