(CIC) Clinical Nursing and Health Informatics Consortium

Grounded in 21st century values of collaboration, creativity, partnering, and community, this consortium of nursing informatics leaders and world-class research institutions is committed to enriching the health of individuals, families, and communities through the design, deployment and evaluation of advanced information technologies. The Consortium invites partners from academe, clinical practice, research, industry, business, and consumers — all as co-producers of health — to participate in research, development, and training opportunities across the Consortium.

Inception

In November of 1997 at the American Medical Informatics Association meeting in Orlando, Florida, Dr. Connie Delaney (Iowa) convened nurse informaticists to talk about the idea of a national Informatics Educators Collaborative. This discussion built on the early offerings of summer institutes in informatics for faculty organized and taught by Drs. Diane Billings (Indiana), Patricia Brennan (Wisconsin), and Delaney under the auspices of the Midwest Alliance in Nursing in 1996-97. Discussions continued a year later in Chicago where the AMIA Congress focused on informatics education. The group enlisted the support of Deans Angela McBride (Indiana) and Melanie Dreher (Iowa) to guide the notion of national collaboration in informatics among the membership of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in the fall of 1998. Dr. Gail Keenan (Michigan) completed post-doctoral study at Iowa from 1994-96, creating the foundation for Michigan's participation in the Consortium. Simultaneously, Dr. Brennan initiated a student exchange under the auspices of the CIC*.

Meanwhile, both Indiana and Iowa began to recruit additional informaticists to their faculties, including Drs. Anna McDaniel (Indiana) and Phyllis Cullen (Iowa). Finally, in the spring of 2001, Drs. Delaney, Brennan and McDaniel held a planning meeting at the Midwest Nursing Research Society to agree on the establishment of a formal consortium in nursing informatics among Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Keenan and her colleagues from the University of Michigan joined the Consortium, rounding out both the administrative and clinical applications of informatics for the nursing profession. And the rest is history about to unfold.

*The CIC, with headquarters in Champaign, Illinois, is the academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. Its programs encompass nearly all aspects of university activity. (http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/)