The 2026 Nursing Knowledge: Big Data Science (NKBDS) Conference marked an important milestone in the evolution of the initiative as participants gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from June 3-5, 2026, to reflect on accomplishments achieved during the first five-year strategic planning cycle and begin discussions regarding the future direction and strategic goals. Since its inception, the NKBDS Initiative has served as a collaborative forum dedicated to advancing nursing knowledge through data science, informatics, interoperability, innovation, and interdisciplinary partnerships. The initiative has evolved from a collection of emerging workgroups into a mature national community of practice committed to transforming nursing data into actionable knowledge that advances visibility of nursing value and improves health and healthcare.
Throughout the three days of the conference, participants reflected on the significant progress achieved during the 2021-2026 strategic planning period. Workgroups reported accomplishments in standards development, interoperability, terminology advancement, educational innovation, policy and advocacy, nursing value measurement, documentation transformation, and artificial intelligence (AI). Collectively, these efforts have strengthened the foundation necessary to support sharable, comparable, and actionable nursing data while fostering collaboration among nurse scientists, clinicians, educators, academic leaders, informaticians, nursing executives, health system leaders, policymakers, and industry partners.
Keynote and panel presentations opened the conference by challenging participants to consider the growing role of artificial intelligence in healthcare and the workforce, educational, and leadership shifts it demands. These discussions, along with the population health and climate-focused sessions that closed the conference, are described in detail in the Conference Overview below.
A consistent message emerging from workgroup reports, action plans, keynote presentations, and panel discussions was that the next phase of the NKBDS Initiative will require movement beyond the development of standards, models, frameworks, and educational resources toward broader implementation, adoption, and measurable impact. Across workgroups, participants identified opportunities to strengthen dissemination, evaluate outcomes, support organizational adoption, and build sustainable infrastructures for collaboration. These discussions suggested that the expansion of proactive engagement of nursing and discovery of impactful tools of the future will depend not only on generating new knowledge, but also on accelerating the translation of that knowledge into practice, policy, education, and health system transformation.
The sections that follow present the initiative's strategic plan reflections, a detailed conference overview, workgroup reports and action plans, and a concluding synthesis of themes for the next strategic planning cycle.