Industry Spotlight: TIGERs Ready to Show their Stripes

By: Donna Carroll, Editor, The MEDITECH Community Bulletin

Once in a while, you encounter an organization that just makes you feel good about the industry in which you work. Technology Informatics Guiding Educational Reform (TIGER) is one such organization. Though I had heard of the TIGER Initiative before, I found myself exploring it in more detail after receiving an email from Marion Ball, Ed.D. who is Co-Chair of the Executive Committee.

Dr. Ball sent me an email in response to the lead article in last month’s issue of our newsletter. The Customer Spotlight article titled “Technology, It’s All About People” was a summary of a conversation with Gary Croteau, AVP & CIO of South County Hospital in Wakefield, Rhode Island. What drew Dr. Ball to the article was Gary’s emphasis on the human factors involved in technology. That focus on human factors is precisely what is behind the TIGER Initiative.

The TIGER Initiative is focused on transforming the role of the nurse to better use informatics tools, principles, theories and practices to make healthcare safer and more effective, efficient, patient-centered, timely, and equitable. The TIGER Initiative seeks to inform and positively impact all nurses delivering patient care through all aspects of the healthcare continuum, representing more than 3,000,000 nurses in the United States today.

The Invitational TIGER Summit was held in Bethesda, Maryland in the Fall of 2006. The invited attendees for the TIGER Summit included over 120 leaders from the nation’s nursing practice, education, informatics/technology organizations, and government agencies and represented more than 80 organizations. During this landmark Summit, a 10-year vision and 3-year action plan for transforming nursing practice and education to better prepare nurses to practice in an increasingly automated, informatics-rich, and consumer-driven health care environment was defined.

What’s more impressive than TIGER’s vision and agenda is the fact that all of its members are volunteers from the nursing community who have committed their own time and talents to further the advancement of its mission. One component of the 3-year action plan is the creation of a Virtual Demonstration Gallery/Center to Showcase Best Nursing Practices through the effective use of IT.

Creation of a Virtual Demonstration Center will identify participants as an industry leader and sponsor of the project and will provide the following solutions to overcoming the nursing shortage by:

1. Providing visibility to the 10-year vision of IT-enabled nursing practice and education to broader healthcare audience.
2. Demonstrating the breadth and depth of IT resources in use by nurses to enhance their practice and educational environments.
3. Demonstrating collaboration between industry, healthcare organizations academic institutions, and professional organizations to create educational modules for nurses that are based upon informatics competencies.
4. Providing universal accessibility to this demonstration for all nursing stakeholder groups.
5. Using practice examples from different practice environments that can demonstrate best practices, results of research, case studies and lessons learned by partnering with nursing professional organizations.
6. Demonstrating how integrated IT systems impact nurses and the quality and safety of patient care.

The purpose of the Virtual Demonstration Center is to engage visitors to demonstrate innovative, high-quality, and maximally efficient care scenarios in compelling ways. Visitors to the Virtual Demonstration Center will better be able to participate in building improved healthcare future states, in a virtual “Gallery Walk” accessible to nurse-focused technology applications and provide exemplars of best practice for technology utilization, contact resources and virtual networking opportunities.

This is a noble purpose, indeed! But, one that will require more than just the time and talents of TIGER’s volunteer members. This effort will also require the time and treasure of outside participants. TIGER is seeking the assistance of industry vendors and organizations willing to sponsor the Virtual Demonstration Center to help enable these TIGERs to show their stripes. This is a great opportunity to stand out as an industry leader and to help a very worthy initiative.

To learn more about the TIGER Initiative, visit them online at http://tigersummit.com. To find out more about the Virtual Demonstration Center, you can download the Executive Summary here. Also, feel free to contact Dr. Marion Ball with more detailed inquiries.