From the Editor-in-Chief: leadership for the information age: the time for action is now

Dr. Lynn Nagle, the Senior Nursing Advisor for Canada Health Infoway, writes the column on nursing informatics for this journal. She and I have both been involved in the development and now the implementation of HOBIC (Health Outcomes for Better Information and Care), a province-wide initiative funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care: I am the executive lead and Lynn is the informatics lead. HOBIC seeks to bring online functionality to nurses that supports systematic assessment of patients on eight outcomes upon admission and discharge in acute care, chronic hospital care, long-term care and home care, and quarterly for people in residential settings. There is strong research evidence that nurses make a difference in how well patients do on these outcomes. Nurses can now access the results of their assessments online throughout a patient's stay, compare them to other patients of similar age or gender and begin to set benchmarks for improving these outcomes. Unit managers and chief nursing officers receive an array of monthly reports on the admission and discharge status of patients - information that can also be reviewed on the basis of gender and age group. HOBIC will be a critical component of the electronic health record when it is wholly adopted throughout Ontario.