The 11th International Congress on Nursing Informatics, NI2012 (http://www.ni2012.org) will take place at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure from 23–27 June, 2012. As NI Congress Chair, Dr. Patricia Abbott, notes in the progamme, this currently triennial series of conferences “is the leading gathering in the world for nurses, midwives, and others interested in the use of health information and communication technology to improve global health”. NI2012 is held under the auspices of IMIA's Special Interest Group in Nursing Informatics (IMIA-NI), and is being organised and hosted by AMIA (http://www.amia.org).
The theme of NI2012 will be “Advancing Global Health Through Informatics”, reflecting the team-centered and interdisciplinary approach that is required to transform the health of nations, communities, and patients. NI2012 will have contributions from 38 different countries, and subjects will be explored through a mix of tutorials, keynote presentations, papers, posters, workshops and other activities, as well as formal and informal networking. For those unable to attend in person, a variety of sessions will be available via webcast (http://www.ni2012.org/webcast-sessions), with some also being in French or Spanish. The global nature of the event is reflected in the membership of the committees that have organised the event, with nurses from Europe, Africa, Central and Latin America, Asia and Australasia involved, in addition to those from the USA and Canada. Among the keynote speakers will be Judith Shamian, President and CEO of the Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada (VON Canada) and President of the Canadian Nurses Association, and Patricia Flatley Brennan, professor of nursing and industrial and systems engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Following on from examples started with NI2006 in Seoul, Korea (eg http://differance-engine.net/ni2006blog/) and NI2009 Helsinki, Finland (eg http://www.hi-blogs.info), it is expected that many colleagues will be reporting on the events, and sharing their experiences. Blog reports on NI2012 will be posted at http://www.hi-blogs.info and on the IMIA News site (http://www.imia.info). With the growth of social media, and again as started at NI2009 (http://twitter.com/ni2009), many colleagues are expected to use Twitter to interact with colleagues at and outside the event. NI2012 has its own Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/ni2012) and the hashtag #IMAINI2012 is being encouraged to enable searching and aggregation of tweets.