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GENEVA – The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) are collaborating to improve standardized information sharing for nurses and other clinical staff.
"Nurses need to be able to access and share patient information in a standard way, to ensure safety, improve quality of care across the health care delivery system and communicate with other health professions," said David Benton, CEO of the ICN. "Many nurses from around the world have contributed to the development and improvement of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP). ICN can advance their efforts through this collaboration with IHTSDO."
The new agreement builds on the goals of both companies for state of the art health informatics standard. ICN officials said close collaboration of standards organizations diminishes gaps and overlaps in standardized terminologies.
ICN officials said the organization will be an active participant in the work of the IHTSDO and will facilitate involvement of the nursing community through the IHTSDO Nursing Special Interest Group and ICNP program activities.
"IHTSDO welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with international nursing organizations to ensure that clinical terminologies respond to the needs of nurses, who are the largest health profession," said Jennifer Zelmer, chief executive officer of the IHTSDO. "We share the goal of having terminologies working effectively together in computer systems that support patient care and other applications."
ICN and IHTSDO are developers of the ICNP and Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). The ICNP terminology helps serve a critical role for ICN in representing the domain of nursing practice worldwide, thus providing nurses at all levels with data-based information used for practice, administration, education and research, said ICN officials. SNOMED CT is a multidisciplinary healthcare terminology designed to support the entry and retrieval of clinical concepts in electronic record systems and the safe, accurate, and effective exchange of health information.
