What You Need to Know for a Career in Nursing Informatics
Technology now plays an integral role in how healthcare organizations operate and deliver patient care. In 2024, nearly 100% of nonfederal acute care hospitals and 91% of physicians’ offices nationwide had adopted electronic health records (EHR), according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. In 2008, those figures stood at just 9% and 17%, respectively.
As digital systems become more prevalent, healthcare organizations increasingly need professionals who understand the connection between technology and clinical practice. Nursing informatics is a field that focuses on that connection. It combines nursing science with computer and information sciences to find ways to improve how data and technology are used in healthcare delivery. Nursing informatics professionals apply their expertise to help healthcare providers make more informed decisions and ensure that the technology being used supports patients’ care.
Healthcare systems continue to evolve, and nursing informatics professionals are helping organizations improve their clinical workflows and use their health data more effectively.
How Is Nursing Informatics Used in Healthcare?
The roots of nursing informatics can be traced back to the 19th century and Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of the nursing profession who used data to inform the medical care she provided to her patients. Her work in this area helped identify unsanitary conditions as a major cause of death and ultimately improved outcomes for British soldiers during the Crimean War.
Today, nursing informatics professionals apply that same data-driven approach to improve the way healthcare is delivered, using far more advanced tools. Nursing informatics professionals influence how their healthcare organizations collect and interpret clinical information. They also help shape how their organizations use technology in patient care.
Following are some of the more notable modern-day applications of nursing informatics:
Clinical system design and optimization: Nursing informatics professionals bring a clinical perspective to the design of EHRs and other information systems. They help their organizations align their technology with their nurses’ workflows and make relevant data readily available to them while they are caring for patients.
Clinical documentation: Nursing informatics professionals enable nurses to more efficiently document useful patient information while accounting for the demands of the day-to-day clinical care they provide. Having structured and consistent documentation makes clinical data easier to retrieve and share.
Healthcare data analysis: Nursing informatics professionals help their organizations convert clinical data into useful insights. Organizations can use these findings to evaluate their care practices and identify areas for improvement.
Technology implementation: Nursing informatics professionals help their organizations integrate new systems into their clinical practices. Employing testing, education, and workflow planning, they can support healthcare teams as they adopt and use new technology.
Nursing informatics technologies overlap with other aspects of healthcare technology, including remote patient monitoring and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Together, these technologies contribute to the continued evolution of data-driven healthcare.
How to Pursue a Nursing Informatics Career
Nurses and other healthcare professionals with informatics expertise are likely to be in high demand as healthcare organizations generate increasing amounts of data and use it to guide the way they provide care. Between 2024 and 2034, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects much faster than average employment growth for professionals such as health information technologists and medical registrars (15% growth) as well as medical and health services managers (23% growth)—all of whom have roles that may draw on informatics.
The broader nursing workforce is expected to expand as well. The BLS projects employment growth of 5% for registered nurses (RNs) and 35% for advanced practice nurses. Though not all of these nursing roles directly involve informatics, these projections reflect an expectation of continued demand for nursing professionals within healthcare systems that increasingly rely on digital technology.
The qualifications for a role in nursing informatics depend on the employer and the level of responsibility the position requires. In general, nursing informatics professionals need to cultivate a strong nursing foundation before developing informatics expertise.
Common qualifications for nursing informatics positions include:
RN licensure: Most positions require an active RN license. Preparing for RN licensure enables individuals to gain the clinical knowledge and skills needed to understand how technology affects nursing practice and patient care.
Education: A Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree often serves as the minimum educational prerequisite for informatics roles. Advanced positions may require a graduate degree in nursing.
Clinical experience: Experience working directly with patients helps nurses learn how digital systems function in practice. It can also give them insight into the documentation demands and safety and ethical considerations that can influence nurses’ technology decisions.
Informatics education: Nurses can develop specialized knowledge in informatics through coursework or a certificate program. Graduate education can provide more advanced preparation for leadership or system-level roles.
Professional certification: Nurses can pursue a certification to build their informatics expertise and prepare for new career opportunities. The informatics nursing certification (NI-BC) from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) is the primary credential for nurses who specialize in informatics. Applicants need an active RN license, at least two years of nursing experience, and 30 hours of continuing education in nursing informatics to qualify.
How to Develop Skills in Nursing Informatics
Working in nursing informatics requires a range of technical and professional skills. While specific expectations vary by role, several core capabilities apply across the field.
Skills are needed in areas that include:
Clinical judgment: Nurses need to be able to connect information from digital systems with their knowledge of clinical practice.
Technical proficiency: Familiarity with EHRs and other healthcare technologies enables nurses to work confidently with digital tools.
Data literacy: Nurses need to be able to analyze and interpret health data and recognize how it applies to nursing practice. They also need to be skilled at identifying information that may be incomplete or inaccurate.
Communication: Informatics nurses often collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and need to be able to communicate both clinical and technological concerns clearly.
Ethical judgment: Working with sensitive health information requires an understanding of the importance of maintaining patients’ privacy and the potential safety implications of technology.
Nurses can hone skills in these areas through a combination of formal education and professional experience. Academic programs provide opportunities for individuals to build foundational knowledge and practice new abilities. Professional settings allow nurses to apply what they’ve learned in real-world environments.
Pursue an Education
Completing a college degree program can help individuals become familiar with informatics fundamentals they may not encounter simply by using digital systems on the job. Coursework in the program can also help them learn how these concepts apply across different technologies and healthcare settings.
Case studies and group discussions allow students to examine informatics challenges from different perspectives. Simulations offer them structured opportunities to practice their classroom learning.
A program that combines foundational instruction with interactive and applied learning can make informatics concepts easier for students to understand and use in practice.
Gain Hands-On Experience
Professional experience gives nurses opportunities to apply informatics concepts within the systems and procedures of a particular healthcare organization. Taking part in orientation and workplace training can reinforce their academic learning by showing them how these concepts apply in everyday practice.
Clinical placements and supervised workplace experience can help nurses hone their technical proficiency and problem-solving abilities. Working with digital tools while providing care to patients can expose them to challenges that classroom exercises can’t fully replicate.
Learn From Colleagues
Experienced nurses and other informatics professionals can provide nurses with additional guidance on how to use informatics technology within a particular work environment. They can answer nurses’ questions and offer them feedback that’s relevant to the specific systems their organization uses.
Peer mentoring and coaching can provide nurses with individualized support as they work with unfamiliar tools. Group learning opportunities allow colleagues to exchange ideas and discuss challenges they encounter.
Career Paths in Nursing Informatics
Nursing informatics can shape a nurse’s career even when informatics isn’t their primary focus. All RNs routinely use clinical information systems and patients’ data, while some nursing professionals specialize in the field and make it central to their work.
Job titles and responsibilities vary by employer, but all informatics-focused positions require professionals who understand both nursing practice and healthcare technology.
The following are among the roles in which nurses can apply their informatics expertise.
Registered Nurse
RNs regularly use EHRs and other digital systems to document patients’ care, review patients’ information, and support their clinical decision-making. Although most RNs don’t specialize in informatics, their work is closely connected to the technologies and data practices that nursing informatics professionals help shape.
Providing direct patient care can provide valuable clinical experience for nurses interested in the informatics specialty. Through this experience, RNs see how technology affects everything from administrative responsibilities and care processes to patient safety. They can draw on that experience if they later decide to pursue a role with a greater focus on informatics.
Nursing Informatics Specialist
Informatics is a primary area of practice for nursing informatics specialists, rather than one component of the clinical care they provide. These professionals may help optimize their organization’s EHR systems so they reflect how nurses work or make relevant patient data easier to access. They may also perform staff training and help maintain the integrity of their organization’s healthcare data.
Nurses can prepare for the nursing informatics specialist role by expanding their clinical experience and gaining an informatics education. Experience with system implementation or staff training can provide additional opportunities for them to build relevant skills. Depending on the position, nurses may also want to pursue a professional certification to strengthen their qualifications.
Informatics Nurse Consultant
Informatics nurse consultants advise healthcare organizations on their selection and/or implementation of new technology. They may help an organization manage its projects, assess how proposed systems will affect its clinical practice, or recommend changes to its existing workflows. They may also assist in training its staff in using different and new technologies.
This role requires an in-depth understanding of both nursing practice and information systems. Educational requirements vary, although advanced coursework or certification may enhance a nurse’s qualifications.
Chief Nursing Informatics Officer
A chief nursing informatics officer (CNIO) is an executive who guides a healthcare organization’s approach to informatics in the context of nursing practice. CNIOs represent the nursing perspective in the organization’s technology decisions and help establish priorities for its adoption of new systems. Their responsibilities may also involve EHR optimization and workforce education.
Reaching this level generally requires an extensive background in nursing informatics and organizational leadership. Candidates typically need a graduate nursing degree, along with several years of clinical nursing experience. Professional certification is often preferred as well.
Trends in Nursing Informatics
The nursing informatics field continues to change as existing technologies become more sophisticated and new tools enter clinical settings. Some technologies are already embedded in routine care, while others remain active areas of research.
The following are among the more significant trends in nursing informatics.
EHRs
Electronic health records have progressed from an emerging technology to a standard part of healthcare delivery. Now that these systems are widely used, healthcare organizations need to consider how effectively they function in their care settings.
Poor alignment between an organization’s EHR system and its clinical workflows can increase nurses’ workload by making documentation more burdensome and information harder to retrieve. Nursing informatics professionals can bring a clinical context and understanding to system optimization. This can help organizations improve their system’s usability and maintain accurate patient records.
Nursing Data and Advanced Analytics
The information nurses record in EHRs can be useful beyond documenting an individual patient’s care. Healthcare organizations that organize their EHR entries to support the way nurses provide care can make the data easier to analyze. Organizations can use the data to examine their patients’ outcomes and gain insight into their nurses’ workloads or capacity.
Advanced analytics can be employed to reveal patterns in the data that inform the way care is delivered and to support an organization’s decision-making. For data analysis to be reliable, the entries must accurately reflect the care nurses provide.
Mobile Health and Remote Patient Monitoring
Mobile health tools and remote patient monitoring enable the collection of healthcare data outside traditional healthcare settings. Patients can transmit information from apps or connected devices, giving their care teams additional insight into their health between in-person visits.
Nurses may monitor patients’ incoming information and use it to support their care management. As these technologies evolve, nursing informatics professionals can help organizations determine how remote data should be incorporated into health records and fit into existing care processes.
Automation
Nursing informatics professionals in healthcare organizations are exploring ways to automate routine administrative tasks. Modern healthcare systems can reduce the amount of manual data entry nurses perform and allow information to move more easily between technologies.
Greater automation can make documentation more efficient, but it also increases the importance of accurate data and reliable system connections. Organizations can better align their automated data capture and system integration with their clinical practices. This allows the automation to support nursing work without compromising the quality of patients’ data.
AI in Nursing Informatics
AI has become increasingly connected to nursing informatics because AI systems in healthcare rely on clinical data. AI applications can support patients’ care, but they also introduce concerns that nurses and healthcare organizations need to address.
Clinical Support and Workflow Applications
AI technologies can be used to analyze patients’ data to identify the patients’ potential health risks or signs of deterioration. These tools can help nurses prioritize their attention and evaluate information that might otherwise be difficult to recognize within large amounts of data.
AI can also be employed to assist with nurses’ documentation tasks and other administrative work. By reducing the time nurses spend on repetitive tasks, these applications have the potential to allow nurses to focus more on caring for patients. However, nurses still need to review AI-generated information and apply their own judgment.
Challenges of Using AI in Nursing Informatics
AI also introduces challenges that healthcare organizations need to consider before integrating these tools into their nursing practices. Some of the primary concerns are in the following areas:
Data quality and bias: AI outputs reflect the information a system processes and was trained on. AI trained on incomplete or unrepresentative data can produce inaccurate recommendations and reinforce existing disparities.
Privacy and security: Cyberattacks already pose a significant threat to health data. According to the FBI, healthcare and public health organizations reported more ransomware incidents than organizations in any other sector in 2023. Because AI systems rely on vast amounts of sensitive patient information, healthcare organizations need to ensure they are protecting that data from unauthorized access and establish appropriate limits on its use.
Transparency and accountability: Some AI tools don’t clearly explain how they reached a certain conclusion. This can make it harder for nurses to evaluate their recommendations or determine the responsibility when errors occur.
Training and overreliance: Nurses need to have a sufficient level of AI literacy to understand a tool’s limitations and recognize questionable results. Relying too heavily on AI can interfere with a nurse’s independent clinical judgment.
Connect Nursing Practice and Technology
Nursing informatics professionals connect clinical knowledge with the technologies and data that drive modern healthcare. With a relevant education and experience, nurses can apply informatics as they deliver direct patient care or pursue a specialized role to influence how their healthcare organization uses digital systems to improve care.
