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HEALTH AND NURSING INFORMATICS IN

AUSTRALIA

y Australia is a federation of eight states and territories.y In 2001, the national census indicated that there were 1,259 nursing workers

per 100,000 populations where 51% worked less than 35 hours per week.

y Around 225,000 registered (80%) and enrolled (20%) nurses are employedin acute care hospitals (65%), aged and community care (35%) in Australia.

y Of these 89% are employed as clinical nurses, mostly within the followingspecialties: medical/surgical (30%), geriatrics and gerontology (17%),

operating theatre and related nursing (7%), midwifery, obstetrics and

gynecology (7%), and mental health (7%).

y Nursing specialty and other organizations have developed and adoptedpractice standards, competencies, guidelines for curricula development, and

various professional development programs.

y Australia has more than 50 such specialty National Nursing Organizations(NNOs), where the Health Informatics Society Australias nursing

informatics special interest group (HISA NI Sig) is one of these.

y The HISA NI Sig has been funded to develop a strategic plan forNI capacitybuilding, and a plan for the nursing professions engagement with the

Australian government and its informatics agenda.

INFORMATION GOVERNANCE

The National Health Index (NHI) allows easier tracking of information

through healthcare episodes.The National Minimum Dataset (NMDS) is a single integrated collection of

health data, developed in consultation with health sector representatives and

required at the national level for policy formulation, performance

monitoring, evaluation and research.

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The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (AIH&W) provides researchand statistical support to the Australian state and territory governments.

The AIH&W has developed the National Health Information and

Knowledgebase, an Internet-based interactive electronic storage site for

national health metadata.

HEALTH INFORMATICS GROUPS IN

AUSTRALIA

Australia has had a representative to

I

MI

AS working GROUP

8 (WG8)(now NI Sig) since 1984.

Nurses were the second group of health professionals to organize themselvesto promote health informatics in Australia.

The general practitioners were first, beginning in the late 1970s although theHealth Information Managers Association (HIMAA) has been in existence

since 199 but the integration of informatics is more recent.

NI is now a Sig of HISA, which came into existence in 1993.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

NI in Australia began with the Royal Australian Nursing Federation(ANF) in 1984.

A year later a small group of midwives in Victoria, including JoanEdgecumbe, who is now the executive officer of the HISA decided to

call a general meeting of nurses interested in computer use.

About 70 nurses agreed to establish the Nursing Computer GroupVictoria (NCGV).