electronic Journal of Health Informatics

Evelyn JS Hovenga
http://healthinformatics.cqu.edu.au
Health Informatics Research Group, Central Queensland University
Australia

RN, Cert Work, DipAppSc (HN&UM), BAppSc(AdvNsg), MHA, PhD UNSW, FCHSE, FRCNA, FACHI, FACS. Evelyn’s career began in earnest in the late 1970s with nursing, then progressed into public sector health administration, health service management and workstudy during the 1980s, followed by applied research, policy analysis, health and nursing informatics, consulting as a company director and finally in 1993 she entered academe at Central Queensland University, first as a senior lecturer and since 2003 as a Professor delivering and promoting Health Informatics education and research. Evelyn's area of consulting expertise, now spanning nearly 20 years, is in the conduct of hospital productivity reviews consisting primarily of the study of nursing work using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Evelyn developed the Patient Assessment and Information System (PAIS) nursing workload monitoring system during the early 1980s and a Universal Career Evaluation System (UNCES) during the early 1990s. Evelyn’s interest in informatics began in the late 1970s when she undertook a course in computer science. She has actively provided leadership and contributed to various professional organizations since the early 1980s, including the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Evelyn’s personal vision of improving health through the best possible use of information and communication technologies has shaped Evelyn’s subsequent career path. Her networking skills and strong commitment to this vision resulted in her being a foundation board member of the Health Informatics Society of Australia, initiator of the annual National Health Informatics Conferences (HIC) and more recently a foundation Fellow of the newly established Australian College of Health Informatics. Evelyn initiated the publishing of the first Australian text on Health Informatics by Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne in 1996. She is a foundation member of the Standards Australia IT/14 health informatics committee, serves on two technical sub committees and represents this committee as a member of the National ICT Standards Committee, and the National Health Data Standards Committee. She initiated and collaboratively directed an international effort to develop a new ISO standard for the integration of a reference terminology model for nursing. Compliance with this standard ensures that a clinical information system is able to accommodate nursing concepts. This work was supported by the IMIA Nursing Informatics group and the International Council of Nurses. Evelyn Chairs the Medinfo 2007 Organising Committee managing the 12th World Congress on medical Informatics hosted by HISA under the auspices of IMIA to be held in Brisbane, late August 2007.