Scott Reeves, editor of the Journal of Interprofessional Care (JIC), is a close colleague of mine. I’ve come to rely on his ability to bring forward important issues surrounding interprofessional education and collaborative practice onto the international stage.  Late last year, I sent Scott an email that I’d like to see JIC focus an issue on interprofessional informatics.  He quickly shot me back a recent early online editorial he wrote with Craig Kuziemsky of the University of Ottowa on this very topic:  the intersection of informatics and interprofessional collaboration.  Scott and Craig are truly thought leaders in this area and the editorial is worth a read.

Scott also agreed to focus an entire issue on interprofessional informatics to be co-edited by Craig and my University of Minnesota colleague Connie Delaney, dean of our School of Nursing and interim director of the University’s Institute for Health Informatics.  I’ll be working with them on the interprofessional collaborative aspects of the papers we receive. I’ve learned a lot from Connie about informatics over the past several years. I must admit that some days I struggle to understand, but after spending some time with the topic, I’m convinced it is an important field to incorporate into our thinking.  Connie brings an important perspective to the National Center; her informatics team works in concert with experts in evaluation and research.   We are wrestling with the interfaces now.

The National Center has also added complexity to the work of the Academic Health Center Office of Education at the University of Minnesota. Our office has the opportunity to test new models in the Nexus between practice and education using, among other methods, informatics approaches. As I think through improving collaboration and communication on my own team, I’ve asked staff to re-envision the Nexus in Minnesota using an informatics lens, going beyond traditional project management. This work is only just beginning.

Informatics is often a misunderstood field. It is not about a singular focus on electronic health records, mobile devices or any other technology for that matter.  The Reeves and Kuziemsky editorial defines key characteristics and functions, as well as uses and abuses.  They discuss it as an interdisciplinary field, using important distinctions as:

• “incorporates fields such as information science, decision science and organizational theory”
• “development of solutions to address information processing and communication issues”
• “improved ways to analyze and communicate data to it can be incorporated into [practice]”
• “associating informatics with technology is unfortunate and puts the emphasis on the tools”

I will be sharing with you other ideas at the intersection of informatics, interprofessional education and collaborative practice, and I encourage you to consider the call for papers for this important themed issue of the Journal of Interprofessional Care.