User:Cathyrfulton/sandbox

The following information is a history of the Technology Informatics Guiding Educational Reform (TIGER) Initiative’s beginnings and is presented to give the context in which TIGER was conceptualized, initiated and driven forward. In July of 2004, the report titled “The Decade of Health Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and Information-rich Health Care”, was presented at the conference, The Secretarial Summit on Health Information Technology, launching the National Health Information Infrastructure 2004: Cornerstones for Electronic Healthcare. This report delivered the steps needed to achieve President Bush’s goal that every American has an electronic health record within the decade. The conference was attended by leaders from across healthcare. Although nursing was present in the audience at the conference, members of the nursing profession were not represented at the table and did not have a prominent place on the program. Recognition that nursing had not been represented at the conference, despite their important role in health care, became the impetus for a small visionary group of nursing leaders to develop TIGER. This group convened to “ensure that nursing would be positioned to represent itself in future strategic planning and health policy initiatives aimed at achieving the national electronic health record agenda”.

Through a series of meetings and summits with a diverse group of nursing stakeholders from industry, health care institutions, academia, government and professional organizations, TIGER developed a shared vision, strategies, and specific actions for improving nursing practice, education, and delivery of patient care through the use of health information technology (HIT). The TIGER Initiative aims at providing the vision and mechanism to prepare nursing to meet the challenge of having a workforce capable of working in an information rich, technology centered environment. Over the last six years the TIGER Initiative has developed into three phases:


 * “TIGER Phase I: Engaged practice, education, industry, organizational and federal stakeholders to create a common vision of Health IT enabled practice, education, research and policy in an Invitational Symposium in 2006.


 * TIGER Phase II: Facilitated collaboration among participating organizations to achieve the vision and strategic plan through the development of nine collaborative reports involving over 1500 nurses nationally bringing expertise from all types of practice, education, research and policy.
 * TIGER Phase III: Integrate interdisciplinary and allied health professional into efforts, disseminate results, and develop a Virtual Learning Environment to enhance widespread adoption of Health IT”