As nursing informatics gained recognition as a nurs-
ing specialty, the Council of Computer Applications
in Nursing, of the American Nurses Association
(ANA),31 provided a new definition for the field. The
ANA expanded the previous definitions by incorpo-
rating the role of the informatics nurse specialist into
the earlier Graves and Corcoran definition4:
A specialty that integrates nursing science, computer
science, and information science in identifying,
collecting, processing, and managing data and infor-
mation to support nursing practice, administration,
education, and research and to expand nursing
knowledge. The purpose of nursing informatics is to
analyze information requirements; design, imple-
ment and evaluate information systems and data
structures that support nursing; and identify and
apply computer technologies for nursing.31