ANIA/CARING conference report.

This year, a historic event took place in which two major nursing informatics organizations collaborated for a joint annual meeting and educational event--the ANIA/CARING Educational Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. More than 300 participants attended the conference, held April 27 and 28, 2007, at the Las Vegas Hilton. The theme was Nursing Informatics: Taking Steps to Transform the Future of Healthcare--Collaboration, Communication, Connection, and Education.

Diane Skiba, PhD, FAAN, FACMI, the keynote speaker, explored emerging technologies that encourage collaboration, social networking, interactivity, and a fourth wave of computing on nursing practice. She hoped that attendees would receive a "whack on the side of the head" to unlock mental blocks related to these emerging technologies, especially those folks born before 1982 who might be categorized as "Digital Refugees", "Digital Voyeurs", or "Digital Immigrants". The younger generation ("Digital Natives") will likely have little problem adapting to patient education wikis, folksonomies, Web 2.0 tools, blogs, social bookmarks, mashups, and so forth.

Dean Sittig, PhD, who explored the unintended consequences of Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) systems, presented the closing session. While CPOE reduces some types of errors, they can introduce or propagate new ones and change the organizational "safety net". A few of the unintended consequences include altering communication among providers, allowing asynchronous recording of clinical events, work shifting, and creating new and more work. He invited the audience to find a wealth of information and news regarding healthcare and information technology at these web sites: www.informatics-review.com and www.clinfowiki.org.

Many more excellent concurrent sessions were conducted during the conference, as well as a pre-conference workshop, Writing for Publication. The mood and consensus about the event was that it was a great success. I hope that the collaboration between both groups can continue in the future!

ANIA(A) & CARING(C) Board Members, L to R: Vicki Vallejos (A), Barbara Medling (A), Patrick Shannon (C), Jerry Chamberlain (C), Denise Tyler (A), Liberty Rovira (C), Jim Cato (A), Amy Jacobs (C), Sandy Alfon (A), Ed Stern (C), Debra Derickson (C), Curtis Dikes (A), Lisa Anne Bove (A), Dean Smith (A), Linda Busk (A)

By Debra Derickson, MSN, RN