Moya Conrick
Last week the health informatics community received the sad news that Dr Moya Conrick had passed away. Moya’s contribution to health informatics and nursing has been recognised in her long list of awards and publications, her contribution to those who worked with her also lies in the warm memories of a kind and generous person. She will be sadly missed by all who knew her.
Moya Conrick was one of the founders of Health Informatics in Australia, a pioneer in Nursing Informatics and a leader internationally.
Moya had over 25 years as a nurse, midwife and academic; She was passionate about nursing education and health informatics. In 1995 she was one of only 2 Australian experts to receive the HBO Scholars Award and one of only 4 scholars outside the USA. In 2001 she received an award for services to nursing from the Royal College of Nursing Australia.
She was active in promoting information technology as a tool for health and clinical practice and particularly for nurses. Lecturing in Nursing at Griffith since 1992, she instigated the first subject in Nursing and Health Informatics in Queensland and the second in Australia in 1991. She continuously taught in that field and convened two health informatics subjects at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
Moya completed nursing training in 1975 at Princess Alexandra Hospital and her Midwifery training at Mater Mothers in Brisbane in 1976. She went on to complete a Diploma in Applied Science (Health) at QUT in 1989, Bachelor of Nursing at Flinders University in 1991, Masters degree at University of NSW and finally a PhD in Nursing at Griffith University in 2000. She was a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing.
Her scholarly activities included writing 23 book chapters, 30 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, 17 other journal papers, and editing 3 conference proceedings. She was the editor of the leading and most recent textbook in health informatics published in 2006 "Health informatics: transforming healthcare with technology". This text is used extensively both nationally and internationally.
In 2004 she chaired the National Summit of Nursing Informatics Experts on behalf of the federal Department of Health & Ageing and which produced the "Framework for Nursing Informatics in Australia". This led to her as the inaugural chair establishing Nursing Informatics Australia, the Nursing Special Interest Group of HISA.
Moya served on several government advisory committees including the Australian Health Information Advisory Council advising Australian Health Ministers and an observer on the HealthConnect Board. She was also a long standing member of Standards Australia Australia IT14 (Health Informatics) and IT14/2 Health Concept Representation and expert advisor to the International Council of Nurses and the Royal College of Nursing Australia (RCNA).
She was regularly called upon to convene national and international workshops in her field. In 2007 she was the co-chair of the International Nursing Informatics Leaders Congress. She was a founding editor of the e-Journal of health Informatics and edited the special Aged Care Informatics edition and was co-founder of Aged Care Informatics Australia .
In 2007 she was awarded a major ARC grant to support research project into reducing the avoidable hospital admissions of the elderly. In her final months she put in place arrangements to ensure the project could proceed without her. This was a field she was passionate about and sadly will not be around to participate in the conduct of the project.
Moya will be greatly missed by colleagues both nationally and internationally, students, family and friends. She will be remembered for her passion for her field, good humour, commitment to health informatics and devotion to her family.
The HISA, Health Information Privacy and Security group(HIPS) has just released it latest submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) looking at eHealth elements of the ALRC final discussion paper.
