Message from the Chair of HiNZ-NMI
Spring is here – and there’s plenty to look forward to!
It’s been a busy year for our digital health community, and it has been fantastic to see so many people connecting, sharing ideas and learning from each other at the successful HiNZ one-day events held around the motu.
Now our attention turns to Digital Health Week in November. The flagship Digital Health Week Conference will be held in Auckland on 18–19 November, bringing together people from across health, technology, research and industry.
For those of us with a clinical focus, make sure you also put Tuesday 17 November in your diary for the Clinical Day ahead of the main conference. It’s another opportunity to connect with colleagues and ensure clinical voices – including nursing and midwifery – remain part of the digital health conversation.
Closer on the horizon, we’re also excited about our next NMI webinar in October: Nurses Connecting Rural and Remote Care. We’ll be showcasing how nurses are using digital technology to overcome distance, improve access and connect people with care in rural and remote communities.
Watch out for more information coming soon.
There is lots happening – and lots of opportunity for nurses and midwives to be part of shaping what comes next.
Carey Campbell (@Carey)
Chair
HiNZ-NMI Updates and News
Opinion/ Soapbox
Digital health needs nurses and midwives at the table!
Digital health is changing healthcare rapidly. But there is an important question we should keep asking: Who is leading that change?
Nurses and midwives must be among them.
Nurses are the largest professional group in the global health workforce, with an estimated 29.8 million nurses worldwide. In Aotearoa New Zealand alone, there are more than 78,000 practising nurses, alongside around 3,600 midwives. To put this in perspective, the number of other health professionals combined is around 57,000. So together, nurses and midwives represent an enormous clinical workforce … but numbers are only part of the story.
Nurses and midwives work extraordinarily close to patients, consumers and whānau, often across the entire healthcare journey. We see where systems help, where they create extra work, and where technology designed with good intentions simply doesn’t fit clinical practice.
We are also among the biggest creators and users of clinical information. In hospital environments particularly, nursing documentation is extensive, with studies finding nurses can spend a substantial proportion of each shift documenting care.
So why would we design the digital future of healthcare without nurses and midwives helping to lead it?
Internationally, the literature increasingly recognises the importance of nursing and midwifery leadership in digital health, while also highlighting that our contribution can remain surprisingly invisible.
We don’t all need to become informaticians, data scientists or AI experts. But we do need nurses and midwives at the tables where digital health decisions are made - identifying problems, challenging assumptions, co-designing solutions and asking the most important question:
“Will this actually make care better for the people we serve?”
Your NMI Executive - Meet Andrew Ingersoll
Andrew is a registered nurse with more than 20 years’ experience across New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific, and the United States. He has worked at the intersection of clinical practice, digital health, governance, and health system transformation, helping organisations improve the safety, effectiveness, and adoption of digital technologies.
As Clinical Informatics Director at Health New Zealand, Andrew leads work across clinical governance, digital clinical assurance, clinical safety, benefits realisation, and national informatics initiatives. He has played a key role in developing assurance frameworks, governance models, and standards that support safe and sustainable digital health delivery across the health system.
Andrew is recognised for bringing together clinical, operational, and technical perspectives to solve complex problems. His work focuses on ensuring digital investments deliver measurable value while supporting patient safety, equity, trust, and effective clinical practice.
He is passionate about strengthening the partnership between clinicians and digital teams and enabling a health system where technology supports better outcomes for patients, whānau, and the workforce.
New Publications from Nursing & Midwifery Informatics
Latest edition of the IMIA NI Newsletter.
If you haven’t already, you can request to join their LinkedIn group here.
Interesting read
Interesting Viewing
Learning and Development
There are some programmes that you may be interested in here:
Upcoming Events
National events
Please let us know if you have any other news or events to share as a reply to this post.
International events
Please let us know if you have any news or events to share as a reply to this post.
About HiNZ-NMI
The HiNZ nursing & midwifery informatics special interest group (HiNZ-NMI) supports the development of nursing and midwifery informatics in New Zealand. HiNZ-NMI meets on the eHealth Forum and publishes a free eNewsletter with digital health updates of relevance to nurses.
Was this forwarded to you?
Join the eHealth Forum to receive it directly.
What is nursing and midwifery informatics?
Nursing and Midwifery Informatics science and practice integrates nursing and midwifery, its information and knowledge and their management with information and communication technologies to promote the health of people, families and communities world-wide.