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The 21st century has seen several infectious disease outbreaks that have turned into epidemics and pandemics including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which began in Asia in 2003 (Poon,

We aimed to create and validate a natural language processing algorithm to extract wound infection‐related information from nursing notes. We also estimated wound infection prevalence in homecare settings and described related patient characteristics. In this retrospective cohort study, a natural language processing algorithm was developed and validated against a gold standard testing set. Cases with wound infection were identified using the algorithm and linked to Outcome and Assessment Information Set data to identify related patient characteristics. The final version of the natural language processing vocabulary contained 3914 terms and expressions related to the presence of wound infection. The natural language processing algorithm achieved overall good performance (F‐measure = 0.88). The presence of wound infection was documented for 1.03% (n = 602) of patients without wounds, for 5.95% (n = 3232) of patients with wounds, and 19.19% (n = 152) of patients with wound‐related hospitalisation or emergency department visits. Diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and skin ulcer were significantly associated with wound infection among homecare patients. Our findings suggest that nurses frequently document wound infection‐related information. The use of natural language processing demonstrated that valuable information can be extracted from nursing notes which can be used to improve our understanding of the care needs of people receiving homecare. By linking findings from clinical nursing notes with additional structured data, we can analyse related patients' characteristics and use them to develop a tailored intervention that may potentially lead to reduced wound infection‐related hospitalizations.

This follow-up survey on trends in Nursing Informatics (NI) was conducted by the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Student and Emerging Professionals (SEP) group as a cross-sectional study in 2019. There were 455 responses from 24 countries. Based on the findings NI research is evolving rapidly. Current ten most common trends include: clinical quality measures, clinical decision support, big data, artificial intelligence, care coordination, education and competencies, patient safety, mobile health, description of nursing practices and evaluation of patient outcomes. The findings help support the efforts to efficiently use resources in the promotion of health care activities, to support the development of informatics education and to grow NI as a profession.

The importance of nursing informatics (NI) is highlighted because of changing healthcare landscapes in response to rising digital health and technology integration and use. However, NI education, competency requirements and roles are not standardized across the world, and the potential of NI is modestly understood internationally. This paper explores opportunities and challenges in NI discussed in a panel at the 14th International Congress on Nursing and Allied Health Informatics. The panel was organized by the International Medical Informatics Association's-Nursing Informatics Working Group's Student and Emerging Professionals group. Discussions during the panel session were synthesized and analyzed using content analysis. Results indicate that challenges in NI education, career opportunities and roles continue to exist across healthcare settings and regions. Findings suggest that the following issues need attention: (1) collaboration to build stronger infrastructure to guide NI education, research and practice; (2) improved visibility and SPECIAL FOCUS ON NURSING AND DIGITAL HEALTH 8 9 Emerging Professionals' Observations of Opportunities and Challenges in Nursing Informatics appreciation of NI; and (3) greater dissemination of evidence of NI in various health settings. This paper offers recommendations for nurse leaders on strategies to address these issues in NI at the local, regional and global levels.