Evelyn’s career began in earnest in the late 1970s with nursing, then progressed into public sector health administration, hea

Dr Evelyn J.S Hovenga

Evelyn’s career began in earnest in the late 1970s with nursing, then progressed into public sector health administration, health service management and workstudy during the 1980s, followed by applied research, policy analysis, health and nursing informatics, consulting as a company director and finally in 1993 she entered academe at Central Queensland University, first as a senior lecturer and since 2003 as a Professor delivering and promoting Health Informatics education and research. Evelyn's area of consulting expertise, now spanning nearly 20 years, is in the conduct of hospital productivity reviews consisting primarily of the study of nursing work using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Evelyn developed the Patient Assessment and Information System (PAIS) nursing workload monitoring system during the early 1980s and a Universal Career Evaluation System (UNCES) during the early 1990s.

Evelyn’s interest in informatics began in the late 1970s when she undertook a course in computer science. She has actively provided leadership and contributed to various professional organizations since the early 1980s, including the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Evelyn’s personal vision of improving health through the best possible use of information and communication technologies has shaped Evelyn’s subsequent career path. Her networking skills and strong commitment to this vision resulted in her being a foundation board member of the Health Informatics Society of Australia, initiator of the annual National Health Informatics Conferences (HIC) and more recently a foundation Fellow of the newly established Australian College of Health Informatics where she is serving as its President. Evelyn initiated the publishing of the first Australian text on Health Informatics by Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne in 1996.

She is a foundation member of the Standards Australia IT/14 health informatics committee, serves on two technical sub committees and represents this committee as a member of the National ICT Standards Committee, and the National Health Data Standards Committee. She initiated and collaboratively directed an international effort to develop a new ISO standard for the integration of a reference terminology model for nursing. Compliance with this standard ensures that a clinical information system is able to accommodate nursing concepts. This work was supported by the IMIA Nursing Informatics group and the International Council of Nurses.

Evelyn Chairs the Medinfo 2007 Organising Committee managing the 12th World Congress on medical Informatics hosted by HISA under the auspices of IMIA to be held in Brisbane, late August 2007.

Membership in Professional AssociationsSocieties: 

Fellow and President, Australian College of Health Informatics

Fellow, Australian College of Health Service Executives

Fellow, Royal College of Nursing Australia

Member, Australian Computer Society

Chair, Australian Computer Society, Health Informatics Committee

Member, American Medical Informatics Association

Member, Health Informatics Society of Australia

Vice-President (Working and Special Interest Groups), International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).

Key Professional Activities:

I have a strong commitment to the management of various projects associated with the development of health informatics standards via the following Standards Australia International (SAI) committees (refer https://committees.standards.com.au/COMMITTEES/IT-014/ for details).:

Ø      Standards Australia IT/14 (Health Informatics) Committee member representing CQU

Ø      Standards Australia IT/14/2 - (Vocabulary and Semantic Issues) Committee member

Ø      Standards Australia IT/14/9 – (Health Records and Modelling Coordination) Committee member

Ø      National Informatics and Communication Technologies (ICT) Standards Committee member representing IT/14

Ø      Board Member, HL7 Australia with responsibility for education.

Ø      Member NPS Pharmaceutical Decision Support Working Group

Ø      Member Australian Department of Health and Ageing, Health Data Standards Committee

Ø      Member Australian Department of Health and Ageing, Workforce Capacity Building Task Force

Many of these projects contribute to standards work items undertaken by health informatics committees from the European standards organization (CEN TC251), the International Organisation of Standards (ISO/TC215) and HL7.

Education:

Dip.App.Sc. (Hosp.Nsg & Unit Mgt)  1979 Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences (now Latrobe University, Melbourne).

B.App.Sc. (Advanced Nursing) Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences 1982 (now Latrobe University, Melbourne)

M.H.A 1990 Due to high commendations from examiners, was able to upgrade this thesis to meet PhD requirements. University of New South Wales, Sydney

PhD awarded February 1995 , Thesis: Casemix, Hospital Nursing Resource Usage and Costs. University of New South Wales, Sydney

RN, 1977 Registered as a General Nurse in Victoria and Queensland.

1980  Certificate of Workstudy - Footscray Institute of Technology (now Victoria University), supplemented by the successful completion of a course of instruction on Modular Arrangement of Predetermined Time Standards (MODAPTS) including concise office and transit modapts.

1984  Short course in statistics for research workers at Melbourne University.

1989 Successfully completed four subjects within the Graduate Diploma Course in Applied Information Systems at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.