Sharing intellectual and social capital: A partnership to advance informatics and foster consumer centric care

The need to educate the nursing workforce about using informatics tools to provide safe, quality consumer centric care is of utmost importance. A unique and strategic partnership was established to address this challenge. The informatics specialty option at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center School of Nursing has joined forces with McKesson Corporation. The overall goal of this partnership is to provide leadership in the field of nursing informatics and the further development of nursing informatics as a discipline. This paper describes the converging forces that serve as a foundation for the partnership. There are also descriptions of the two partners and their shared goals. This partnership was designed to share intellectual and social capital to advance nursing informatics through educational and research opportunities. The partnership also allows for the use of intellectual capital to brainstorm new developments, designs and to test the usability of new products. This paper reports on the various projects underway in the area of education, scholarship, research and development.