The Rita D. Zielstorff Nursing Informatics Leadership Award

2016 Recipient

 Mary Kennedy MS, RN-BC was recognized as the winner of the 2016 Rita D. Zielstorff Nursing Informatics Leadership award at the 14th Annual Trends in Clinical Informatics Symposium on April 29.

Ms. Kennedy has been active in the field of Nursing Informatics and Healthcare Information Technology for over 25 years. She has a long history of volunteering to foster professional development locally and nationally and is ANCC Board Certified  in Nursing Informatics.

Ms. Kennedy has held a variety of leadership roles within healthcare delivery organizations, and solution vendors.  She successfully led mission critical  Electronic Medical Record (EMR) implementation projects and worked with global solution providers to provide next generation E.M.R. products. She is currently a Clinical Instructor at Northeastern University in the College of Computer and Information Science.

Ms. Kennedy is an active member of multiple professional organizations including: NENIC, Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI), HIMSS, AONE, ANA, ONL (MA, RI, NH, CT) and the Massachusetts Action Coalition (Nurse of the Future Core Competency Work Group). 

Ms. Kennedy was a Boston Area Nursing Informatics Consortium (BANIC) Past President and a founding member of the New England Nursing Informatics Consortium (NENIC). She has been the chair of NENIC’s Education and Development committee since its inception.  The committee has offered more than 15 Annual Symposiums (>60 speakers), Fall and Spring networking programs (>20) and poster’s (>125)  . As the committee matured the following milestones were achieved: a joint provider agreement with Boston Children’s Hospital to offer C.E., online audio-video program offerings, NENIC member highlights published in Computer, Informatics and Nursingand establishing a consistent revenue stream for the organization.

Ms. Kennedy partnered with HIMSS to bring the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Institute to Boston in 2012 and again 2013.   She co-chaired the first  Organization of Nurse Leaders (MA, RI,NH CT) Nursing informatics and Technology sub-committee, with Mark Sugrue RN.   Her work, with the Mass. Action Coalition, lead an evidenced based revision to the informatics and technology section of the Future Nursing Core Competencies ©-Registered Nurse ( NOFNCC-RN)  and related toolkit . These changes were highlighted in a subsequent Mass. Action Coalition webinar in 2016.

Her research interest includes examining  the impact of H.I.T.  at the point of care and nursing informatics competency assessment. She is currently collaborating to define Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment (NICA) tools for Nurse Leaders and Registered Nurses.

Ms. Kennedy has lectured nationally and internationally. In addition to contributing her time to several organizations, this year’s recipient finds the time to present posters on an annual basis on topics that are relevant to the field of nursing informatics.