Whetting your Appetite for Expanding the HIMSS Informatics Knowledge Base

Over the past year,  I have had the pleasure of exploring a collaboration agreement between the American Dietetic Association (ADA) and HIMSS to provide opportunities for knowledge and resource sharing within the domain of nutrition informatics. Both organizations envision this collaboration will advance the fields of health information technology and management systems beyond what each organization could achieve on its own.

HIMSS has a long-standing history of convening clinical informatics communities, including pharmacy, nursing, clinical engineering and IT. The ADA has been exploring biomedical informatics related to the practice of nutrition and dietetics (nutrition informatics) since 2005 and has focused on concepts related to nutrition standards and processes since 2002.

So what is nutrition informatics?

ADA defines nutrition informatics as “the effective retrieval, organization, storage and optimum use of information, data and knowledge for food and nutrition related problem solving and decision-making. Informatics is supported by the use of information standards, processes and technology.”

This collaborative activity will lay the foundation for supporting nutrition informatics competencies for Registered Dietitians/Dietetic Technicians, Registered (RDs/DTRs), including: nutrition science, information processing and knowledge, information science, terminology, evidence-based practice, biostatistics and evaluation methodologies.

Jointly, we’ll also publicize and raise awareness of methods of nutrition informatics to other stakeholder groups (both within the HIMSS membership and beyond) to include other healthcare associations, government bodies and agency representatives, hospitals, vendors, standards development organizations, clinicians, nurses and others. Together, we have the ability to generate a complete electronic record of a clinical patient encounter, as well as support other care-related activities, including evidence-based decision support, quality management, outcomes reporting and the support of nutrition knowledge.

We are very excited to begin this journey with our dietitian colleagues…Please stay tuned for future activities, including a new Nutrition Informatics Corner in our upcoming Clinical Informatics Insights.