Nursing Informatics Innovators: Rita Zielstorff
Rita D. Zielstorff is an internationally recognized expert in clinical information systems. She began her informatics career in 1971 at the Laboratory of Computer Science at Massachusetts General Hospital, subsequently moving to Partners Healthcare System in Boston, MA. She obtained vendor experience as a clinical designer and product manager in clinical e-health systems at Healthvision, Inc. From there she joined the consulting world in the Digital Health group at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP. Ms. Zielstorff is lead author of over 70 monographs, articles and book chapters in nursing and healthcare informatics, some of which are seminal in the field. She has served on numerous committees of the American Nurses Association, AMIA, the Joint Commission and others. Much of this work focused on standards for clinical information systems and for structured vocabularies. In 1990 she was elected to the American College of Medical Informatics, and in 1991 to the American Academy of Nursing. In 2011 she received the Virginia K. Saba Award from AMIA for significant contributions to nursing informatics practice, education and research.