Health IT Week Includes Call for Access to Personal Health Information

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The Alliance for Nursing Informatics wants its members to ask for and access their personal health records as part of a collaborative effort to Ask for Your e-Health Record. During National Health IT Week: September 10-14, all ANI organizations will join forces to ask their members, nurses and clinical colleagues to reach out for their own digital medical information.

The TEN Steps to Support the ANI eHealth Pledge provides guidance taking the pledge and involving others in the week-long activities. This pledge for nurses is part of the Consumer Campaign, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), to involve and empower consumers in their health management through the use of information technology.

“This grassroots effort goes to the foundation of quality healthcare by asking nurses, who provide care to so many people in many different healthcare settings, to take the lead by requesting their personal health information,” says Joyce Sensmeier, MS, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, FAAN, vice president, informatics, HIMSS. “By spreading the word to colleagues and consumers through the Ask for Your e-Health Record campaign, we can help educate the general public on the value of health IT by encouraging them to ask for their own patient health information.”

The Ask for Your e-Health Record campaign is a social media campaign designed to encourage conversations, raise awareness and accelerate the overall interest in the pledge and related activities. For more information:

ANI is co-sponsored by AMIA and HIMSS to represent nursing informatics with a unified voice, while providing synergy and structure needed to advance the efforts of nursing informatics professionals in improving delivery of patient care. ANI represents more than 5,000 nurses, brings together 30 district nursing informatics groups, integrates nurses from a broad swath of academia, practice, industry, and a variety of specialty areas, working collaboratively with nearly three million nurses who currently practice in the United States today.

About AMIA
AMIA, the leading professional association for informatics professionals, serves as the voice of the nation’s top biomedical and health informatics professionals and plays an important role in medicine, health care, and science, encouraging the use of data, information and knowledge to improve both human health and delivery of healthcare services. More about AMIA is online at www.amia.org.

About HIMSS
HIMSS is a cause-based, not-for-profit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare. Founded 51 years ago, HIMSS and its related organizations are headquartered in Chicago with additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. HIMSS represents more than 44,000 individual members, of which more than two thirds work in healthcare provider, governmental and not-for-profit organizations. HIMSS also includes over 570 corporate members and more than 170 not-for-profit organizations that share our mission of transforming healthcare through the effective use of information technology and management systems. HIMSS frames and leads healthcare practices and public policy through its content expertise, professional development, research initiatives, and media vehicles designed to promote information and management systems’ contributions to improving the quality, safety, access, and cost-effectiveness of patient care. To learn more about HIMSS visit website www.himss.org.