University Nursing Informatics Project Proposal: AI Integration

This project proposal outlines a strategic plan to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into various aspects of nursing informatics within a hospital setting. The project aims to leverage AI, particularly virtual nurse avatars, to enhance patient care, streamline healthcare processes, and improve patient outcomes. The proposal details the benefits of virtual nurses, such as improved patient compliance, efficient discharge procedures, and enhanced patient-provider interactions, as supported by existing literature. It also identifies key stakeholders, including physicians, nurses, hospital authorities, and the health informatics team, and describes the technologies required for implementation, such as smart phone apps with three-dimensional, animated virtual nurses. The project emphasizes the development of a dedicated team to ensure the effective integration of virtual agents, with the ultimate goal of creating a more efficient, patient-centered healthcare system that combines automation with manual nursing practices. The project proposal concludes that integrating AI technologies can bridge the gap between healthcare demands and supply.

Running head: PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
Introduction
Ever since the introduction of health informatics, the healthcare industry has grown
enormously with the adoption of new technologies continuously. One such innovation is the
application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the domain of nursing informatics. The emerging
need to implement advanced techniques in healthcare has created an impetus to integrate the
fields of informatics, computer science, and nursing science. To address the evolving
developments, it is crucial to undertake projects that will help fortify the specialty of nursing
informatics with better patient outcomes and care. The aim of this paper is to propose a
project to incorporate AI in all aspects of nursing strategically.
Description of the project
This proposal intends to provide a detailed report on the requirement and application
of AI as a part of nursing informatics in hospitals. Noteworthy, upcoming AI methods when
used abundantly enhance healthcare processes by merging entailing technologies with daily
nursing operations. Virtual nurse avatars or relational agents, created by computer software,
have notably garnered much importance as an application of AI. Such avatars perform
interactive actions that include delegating nursing practices like collection and maintenance
of patient information, the deliverance of hospital discharge information, and assistance
regarding patient coaching and care. These relational agents are often animated figures on a
computer screen or devices computed to replicate or resemble nursing conducts and
performances related to providing information to patients, measuring a patient’s health
condition, and displaying compassionate behavior at times.

2PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
Stakeholders impacted by this project
Undertaking this project will affect the healthcare set up in a holistic way, where all
the members and stakeholders will benefit from it. A "stakeholder's analysis" aids in
recognizing the main individuals or professionals ranging from hospital leadership to the staff
and patients in frontline, associated with the facility who will be impacted by this project.
These stakeholders are directly involved in the facility of virtual agents, where each of them
have a role to play. Physicians and nurses are predominantly responsible for the therapeutic
management of patients, who will benefit immensely from this project, as there will be a
striking reduction in manual workload and errors, thereby leading to increased efficiency in
the patient care. From an overall perspective, the hospital authorities will act as a chief
stakeholder, since they will be the financial provider, for the development and adoption of the
project. The health informatics team plays a major role as well. They are responsible in
designing the necessary software, installation and operation of the virtual agent systems
inside the hospital facility.
Expected improvement in patient care outcomes
As per literature on nurse avatar inventions, an evidence based model of virtual nurses
can act as a successful medium to deliver efficient health interventions. It was found in the
treatment of prolonged pain and depression that patients self-reported high compliance rate
while adhering to the suggestions given by virtual nurse avatars, which successfully reduced
their stress and unhealthy eating habits. Almost half of the patients preferred interaction with
the avatar to interacting with a nurse or clinician. In another study, it was found that setting
up virtual nursing interface led to a seamless discharge procedure. It was reported that
nursing avatars could effectively perform several duties, like examining or assessing care
plans and management of medications. They were capable to assist patients having low levels
of health literacy after hospital discharge. The avatars also received affirmative feedback

3PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
from patients who were happy to spend quality time offered by the virtual nurses. From the
range of patient responses, it was evident that the virtual interface was successful in
delivering health knowledge to the patients, while providing them with a sense of empathy
and compassion. From such plethora of advantages and benefits exhibited by virtual nurses, it
is needless to mention that adopting an AI model with enhanced virtual nursing features in
the hospital setting, will not only increase the patient outcomes, but also maintain hassle free
healthcare systems by integrating automation with manual nursing.
Technologies required to implement the project
Although evidence is limited, but the steadily growing technology of virtual agents in
nursing has given rise to the need of implementing such a result oriented design. For
example, such an avatar-based service known as Sense.ly has been launched, with its own
project tool called Molly. A similar installation in the hospitals would help in delegation of
several tasks like handling patient check ins in collaboration with the manual care providers.
A fine-tuned smart phone app could be developed, which operates according to presets and
algorithms, includes the appearance of the virtual nurse as a three-dimensional, animated
figure with human-like features and a behavioral inventory that displays subtle human
behaviors.
Project team
To establish the strategic plan, a project team must be developed to systematically
introduce and practice the use of the relational agent in day-to-day operations. By involving
all the team members, it would be a collated program thereby increasing its efficiency and
specificity in providing patient care. To improve the workflow, coordination between team
members is a vital element along with enhanced interpersonal relationships. Installing the
virtual nursing model will help accelerate the workflow, especially in aspects of patient

4PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
admission, counseling, record keeping and medical documentation. This in turn will ease the
working conditions for all staffs within the healthcare team, such as physicians, nurses, unit
clerks, kitchen supervisors, medical technicians and paramedics. The current application of
virtual nurses finds their maximum potential when implemented as an integrative tool to
upgrade the manual care practices, and not simply as a single system.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be deduced that, it is possible to incorporate the emerging AI
technologies in a resourceful technique into the nursing setup in a hospital. As the existing
literature indicates, virtual nurses can perform tasks successfully in a way, which is
applauded by patients, like collection and processing of discharge instructions. While these
agents are incompatible for many of the professional roles fulfilled by real nurses, avatars
can, in alliance with nursing personnel, take on responsibilities that will bridge the prevalent
gap between demand of enhanced healthcare systems and their supply.

5PROJECT PROPOSAL ON NURSING INFORMATICS
Bibliography
Abbott, M. B., & Shaw, P. (2016). Virtual nursing avatars: Nurse roles and evolving concepts
of care. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 21(3).
Canidate, S., & Hart, M. (2017). The use of avatar counseling for HIV/AIDS health
education: the examination of self-identity in avatar preferences. Journal of medical
Internet research, 19(12), e365.
McCue, K., Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T., Crooks, D., Barnett, K. Haas, N., … Gardiner, P.
(2015). A feasibility study to introduce an embodied conversational agent (ECA) on a
tablet computer into a group medical visit. Annual Meeting of the American Public
Health Association.
Salzmann-Erikson, M., & Eriksson, H. (2015). The rise of the avatar: Virtual dimensions of
‘the human’in nursing science. Nordic journal of nursing research, 35(3), 158-164.
Shaked, N. A. (2017). Avatars and virtual agents–relationship interfaces for the
elderly. Healthcare technology letters, 4(3), 83-87.
Shaked, N. A., & Artelt, D. (2017). Virtual Agents & Avatars: with Respect to Patient-Care
Provider. Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated.
Walia, N., Zahedi, F. M., & Jain, D. H. (2017). Potential of Virtual Worlds for Nursing Care:
Lessons and Outcomes. OJIN: the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 23(1).
Zhou, S., Bickmore, T., Paasche-Orlow, M., & Jack, B. (2014). Agent-user concordance and
satisfaction with a virtual hospital discharge nurse. Intelligent Virtual Agents
Conference.