The German Nursing Council (DPR) wants to accelerate the digitalization of nursing care. The aim is to utilize nursing data for the digital strategy of the healthcare system and thus enable evidence-based care, research, and political control. To this end, the DPR has presented a comprehensive expert paper for a nursing informatics initiative (PII). The PII should not be in competition with the existing medical informatics initiative but rather an extension of it.
According to the DPR, there has been a lack of valid, interoperable care data to date. “With the Nursing Informatics Initiative, we are closing this gap and creating the basis for nursing data to be used for primary purposes such as care and management as well as for secondary purposes such as research, public health, and quality policy in line with the logic of nursing care,” says Thomas Meißner, Head of the DPR’s Expert Commission on Digitization in Nursing.
Standardised data sets and new infrastructure
Routine data, quality indicators, and research results are to be brought together in a structured manner in a core data set for nursing care (KDP). In addition, the DPR is calling for the establishment of specialized nursing data integration centers that complement the medical informatics initiative but map nursing-specific content and use cases.
To implement this, the DPR is calling for a federal funding program “Nursing Informatics 2030” worth at least 300 million euros, the expansion of study places, and a special nursing data law modeled on Section 64e SGB V. Among other things, this should regulate data access.
Thinking about the health data space
PII data models and care-specific use cases should also be incorporated into the European Health Data Space at an early stage to ensure international interoperability and comparability. The background to this is the continued low availability of standardized care data. While countries such as Canada and the Netherlands already make widespread use of routine data, Germany is lagging behind here. The DPR is calling for corresponding political resolutions, funding, and legal anchoring before the end of this legislative period.
“PII is not a technical project, but a social mission. If nursing is represented in its data rooms and research structures, it can actively shape the future of the healthcare system,” emphasized Meißner. It is necessary to make care digitally visible as an independent field of care and to enable data-based quality policy.
(mack)
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This article was originally published in
German.
It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.
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