Inspiring and Empowering Nurses at HIMSS25 to Improve Digital Healthcare Transformation Knowledge and Practice

by Whende Carroll, MSN, RN, NI-BC, FHIMSS, Clinical Informatics Advisor, HIMSS

At the 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas, nurses will have immense opportunities for learning and networking that span several essential and timely nursing informatics specialty topics, addressing technology, data, health equity, education, innovation and leadership.

Together, these topics impact the informatics specialty and the modern workforce, advance the nursing profession and help nurses acquire new, essential skills for digital health transformation.

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"The entire preconference Nursing Informatics Forum is always an inspiring way to ignite the action-packed week at the HIMSS Global Conference."
– Whende Carroll, Clinical Informatics Advisor, HIMSS

 

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The HIMSS Global Conference is always stellar, but I’m consistently moved and motivated after the preconference Nursing Informatics Forum. It is an exceptional event where nurse informatics and innovation experts, scholars and leaders come together to share insights about timely topics that nurses in all settings can take back to their places of work for impactful change.

Monday’s preconference Nursing Informatics Forum will inspire and empower nurses from around the globe to lead innovative, global, equitable and data-driven nursing initiatives throughout the healthcare industry. They’ll learn how to overcome the regulatory, financial, burden, patient safety, privacy, infrastructure, quality, governance and workflow efficiency challenges healthcare technology introduces into all administrative, operations and clinical practice settings.

Attendees will gain essential insights about the need for mature data structures, new role and revolutionary skills to successfully utilize emerging technologies, complete effective workforce planning, educate the next wave of nurse technologists and create compelling and sustaining partnerships throughout the industry for more equitable care for individuals and communities.

My deep interest in digital healthcare transformation will be satisfied this year at the Nursing Informatics Forum. Three cornerstones of digital health transformation are data, equity and innovation. Outstanding presenters will discuss all of these at the forum.

Here are the sessions that will address the foundations of digital health transformation and provide attendees with high-value insights, recommendations and practical tips to improve their digital health knowledge and practice.

Session NIF-3: Data Literacy & DIKW Framework: A Foundational Perspective
Speaker:
Anne Snowden, PhD, RN, FAAN
Chief Scientific Research Officer
HIMSS

The understanding and impact of the DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) framework is relevant in healthcare innovation and is foundational in informatics practice. Anne will discuss the progression from raw data to actionable wisdom and how each stage of the DIKW hierarchy is critical in improving data management, literacy, and ethics in nursing practice — patient care delivery, digital health disruption, clinical decision-making and healthcare outcomes in diverse populations and the care experience.

Session NIF-6: Bridging the Digital Divide: Championing Equity and Tackling Bias in Nursing Informatics
Speaker:
Robin Austin, PhD, DNP, DC, NI-BC, FAMIA, FAAN
Assistant Professor
University of Minnesota School of Nursing

Dr. Austin will explore the critical need to address the significant digital health inequities impacting nursing and people-centered care today. Attendees will gain insights into the gaps in nurse technology literacy and access that lead to inequities and biases within healthcare data and algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI) affecting underserved populations. She'll present actionable recommendations for creating fair, effective, compassionate AI-driven healthcare solutions. A highlight of this session will also be a proclamation about the essentialness of the nursing informaticist's role in mitigating community-wide technology and data challenges in practice and their role in data stewardship for healthcare excellence and equity.

Session NIF-7: Collaborative Leadership: Fueling Digital Health Innovation
Moderator:
Anna Schoenbaum
Vice President, Applications and Digital Health
Penn Medicine

Speakers:
Hiyam Nadel
Director, Center for Innovations in Care Delivery
Mass General

Murat Uralkan
Director, Innovation
Houston Methodist

Today healthcare organizations are beginning to break down departmental silos and build integrated, high-functioning system-wide teams to spark innovation to accelerate digital healthcare adoption. This Forum panel will discuss best practices for encouraging these effective partnerships across diverse settings and roles, aligning stakeholder interests, and using data and integrating technology effectively for teams along their digital health adoption journey. Attendees will learn how collaborative leadership drives organizational transformation and begin to challenge current barriers that exist in healthcare innovation successfully.

The entire preconference Nursing Informatics Forum is always an inspiring way to ignite the action-packed week at the HIMSS Global Conference. This year will be no different and promises to empower nurse informaticists with crucial insights and education, enabling them to view healthcare, technology and data through a transformative lens, with a broader vision for a global digital health revolution and understanding better now nursing informatics as a lynchpin role for its success.

Whende M. Carroll, MSN, RN, NI-BC, FHIMSS is the Clinical Informatics Advisor and a fellow at the Healthcare Information and Management System Society (HIMSS). She has served in leadership roles in quality improvement and clinical effectiveness, nursing informatics, and practice optimization in health system, industry, non-profit and payor organizations. Whende is a Nursing Knowledge: Big Data Science Policy and Advocacy workgroup and steering committee member and co-chair of the Digital Health and Innovation workgroup, an American Nurses Association Innovation Advisory Committee (ANA-IAC) for artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence, and data science member, and a past North America HIMSS Nursing Informatics Committee member. She has authored and collaborated on numerous publications about nursing informatics, artificial intelligence, and nursing and the essentialness of a unique nurse identifier to measure nurse value in our value-base care ecosystem. Whende co-authored and edited two books — the 2020 American Journal of Nursing book-of-the-year award-winning text Emerging Technologies for Nurses–Implications for Practice, and Nursing Informatics: Truths, Talents, and Transforming the Future.