During Day 2 of the conference, workgroups developed action plans to guide their activities between the 2026 and 2027 conferences. While each group identified priorities specific to its area of focus, several common themes emerged across the Initiative, including implementation of existing products, advancement of interoperability, workforce development, dissemination of educational resources, and the translation of nursing knowledge into measurable impact. Collectively, the action plans reflect a growing emphasis on moving from concept development to implementation, evaluation, and broader adoption of NKBDS products and initiatives.
Data Science and Clinical Analytics
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The Data Science and Clinical Analytics Workgroup will continue to advance data science capacity building while supporting collaborative research and educational initiatives. The group plans to expand its hands-on learning activities using the All of Us Research Program, moving from the current metformin project toward analyses focused on social and environmental determinants of health. Educational priorities include continued dissemination of Data and AI Microlearning resources, expansion of the DIVE Journal Club, and advancement of the AI Literacy initiative through publications and future research activities. Collectively, these efforts are designed to strengthen data science competencies among nurses while creating practical opportunities to apply analytic methods to clinically relevant questions.
Determinants of Health
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The Determinants of Health Workgroup will focus on completing and disseminating a scoping review examining instruments used to assess adolescent loneliness. This work builds upon the group's growing interest in understanding social and behavioral determinants that influence health outcomes among youth and vulnerable populations. In addition to scholarly dissemination, the group plans to recruit new members and engage in strategic discussions regarding future directions and opportunities to align its work with priorities emerging from the next NKBDS strategic planning cycle.
Digital Health and Innovation
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The Digital Health and Innovation Workgroup will build upon its national “Digitizing Care” survey to better understand nurses' experiences with digital technologies in practice. Findings from the survey will inform a series of activities that move progressively from data collection to innovation, including a co-design session with nurses and technology developers, a virtual hackathon focused on frontline technology needs, and a clinical micro-pilot to evaluate emerging solutions. Planned deliverables include a Digital Humanism position paper, an innovation pipeline blueprint, and an AI literacy roadmap to help guide future digital health development while preserving the human dimensions of nursing care.
Knowledge Modeling and Encoding
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The Knowledge Modeling and Encoding Workgroup will continue its efforts to advance interoperable nursing data through terminology development and standards-based modeling. Priority activities include expanding the Head-to-Toe Assessment Model through data cleansing and terminology mapping, advancing the Fall Prevention Knowledge Model, and exploring a framework for representing nursing interventions across terminology systems. These initiatives seek to strengthen the availability of sharable, comparable, and computable nursing data while supporting future analytics, quality measurement, decision support, and artificial intelligence applications. The work will require continued collaboration with standards development organizations, terminology experts, EHR vendors, and other NKBDS workgroups.
Learning Collaborative for Digital Health
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The Learning Collaborative for Digital Health will focus on creating a sustainable, open-access educational platform to support informatics and digital health education for nursing faculty, students, and practice partners. This platform is intended to serve as a central resource for educational materials developed across NKBDS workgroups and provide a mechanism for broader dissemination of digital health competencies. The group will also continue ongoing projects related to artificial intelligence education and expansion of the Health Informatics Competency Assessment (HICA), supporting efforts to better understand and strengthen informatics competencies across nursing education and practice settings.
Nursing Value
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The Nursing Value Workgroup will continue efforts to define, measure, and demonstrate the value of nursing through real-world initiatives and scholarly inquiry. The primary focus for the coming year will be a project examining rapid response team activation as an example of nursing clinical judgment and early intervention. Activities will include literature reviews, instrument development, pilot testing, psychometric evaluation, and future research planning. The workgroup also plans to continue refining operational definitions of nursing value concepts, explore opportunities to leverage artificial intelligence and real-world data, and strengthen collaborations that support measurement of nursing's contribution to patient outcomes, organizational performance, and health equity.
Policy and Advocacy
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The Policy and Advocacy Workgroup will focus on amplifying the impact of products developed across the NKBDS initiative and supporting broader dissemination of its accomplishments. A key priority will be evaluating outcomes associated with implementation of the Head-to-Toe Assessment framework, particularly its effect on nursing documentation burden and workflow efficiency. The group also plans to identify additional workgroup products that may benefit from coordinated advocacy and dissemination efforts and will explore the feasibility of establishing a speaker bureau to support education, outreach, and broader visibility of NKBDS initiatives. These activities reflect a growing emphasis on translating NKBDS products into practice and policy impact
Transforming Documentation
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The Transforming Documentation Workgroup will continue efforts to advance and optimize the Head-to-Toe Assessment Toolkit while supporting broader adoption across healthcare organizations. Planned activities include evaluating implementation outcomes from early adopter organizations, incorporating lessons learned from health systems that have deployed the toolkit, and collaborating with EHR vendors to facilitate integration of standardized assessment content. The group will also continue working closely with the Knowledge Modeling and Encoding Workgroup to align documentation content with interoperable terminologies and information models, ensuring that nursing documentation can support both clinical care and secondary uses of data. Succession planning activities will further support the long-term sustainability of the workgroup and its initiatives.
Looking Ahead
Although each workgroup identified unique priorities, the action plans collectively illustrate an important evolution in the work of the Initiative. Across groups, there is increasing emphasis on implementation, adoption, evaluation, competency development, and measurable impact. These priorities reflect the growing maturity of NKBDS and provide an early glimpse into themes that may shape the Initiative's next strategic planning cycle.