TIGER Initiative Releases Summary Report at the Annual HIMSS Conference and Exhibition

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) Initiative released a summary report today at the 2007 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference and Exhibition titled "Evidence and Informatics Transforming Nursing: 3-Year Action Steps toward a 10-Year Vision." The TIGER Initiative aims to enable practicing nurses and nursing students to fully engage in the unfolding digital era of healthcare. Enabling nurses to use information technology (IT) seamlessly to provide safer, higher-quality patient care will require action on the part of many stakeholders, including professional organizations, academic institutions, government and policy makers, vendors, healthcare delivery organizations, health information management professionals, and librarians. Available at http://www.tigersummit.com/, the TIGER summary report provides specific action plans for each stakeholder group. As HIMSS Vice-Chair Marion J. Ball Ed.D, FHIMSS has urged, "The simple fact is that we can't transform healthcare without transforming nursing -- we have to act now."

As the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has emphasized in its quality reports, utilizing informatics is a core competency required of all healthcare professions. Yet today the majority of nurses lack the skills they need as professionals to integrate IT seamlessly into their practice. This is a critical juncture for nurses, who comprise 55% of the U.S. healthcare workforce, number close to 3 million, and who must become more aware and involved in the national transformation of healthcare to realize the 10-year goal of Electronic Health Records for its citizens. As Angela McBride, University Dean Emerita at Indiana University School of Nursing stated, "There is no aspect of our profession that will be untouched by the informatics revolution in progress."

Over 100 nursing leaders from more than 70 organizations -- a diverse and comprehensive representation of nursing, informatics, and government agencies as well as technology vendors -- participated in the development of the TIGER vision and action plan last November in Bethesda, Maryland. The goal is to strengthen the voice of the nursing profession in the transformation of healthcare for the 21st century by creating a vision for the future of nursing that aligns with the national IT agenda proposed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Organizations participating in the TIGER Initiative believe that nursing must move forward to integrate information technology into education and practice. Each has pledged to incorporate the TIGER vision and action steps into the organization's strategic plans. Nursing leaders from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), American Nurses Association (ANA), American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE), National League for Nursing (NLN), Sigma Theta Tau International and many specialty organizations joined together to affirm the need for the profession to join in the TIGER Initiative.

The TIGER Initiative is supported by the Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI), a collaborative effort between the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). This project has been funded with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and with funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. N01-LM-6-3505 and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Additional organizations that sponsored the TIGER Initiative include: American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), American Nurses Association (ANA), American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA), Apptis, Audience Response Systems, Capital Area Roundtable on Informatics in Nursing (CARING), Cerner Corporation, Clinical Information Technology Program Office (CITPO), CliniComp Intl., CPM Resource Center, Eclipsys, Elsevier, GE Healthcare Systems, IBM, Independence Foundation, Marion J. Ball -- Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, McKesson, MITRE Corporation, Siemens, Sigma Theta Tau International, Tenet Healthcare, and Thomson Healthcare.

CONTACT: Donna DuLong of TIGER, +1-303-895-7344, donna@tigersummit.com, Tia Abner of AMIA, +1-301-257-7430