Karen A. Monsen

Karen Monsen is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota. An early adopter of health information technology, she has focused on improving the quality of practice and population health outcomes through informatics. As a nurse manager, Karen implemented a computerized documentation system in a public health department in 1999, and immediately began to search the data for meaningful information. She began her academic career in 2007, specializing in informatics research using large data sets, developing new methods and models to describe nurses’ work, and link nursing interventions to client outcomes. Karen is an award-winning teacher whose creativity and depth of knowledge make the most complex of informatics topics fascinating to students while stimulating the thinking of senior colleagues. She leads the Omaha System Partnership for Knowledge Discovery and Health Care Quality with affiliate members from fifteen countries. Karen is transforming the landscape of nursing and health care by giving nurses and all health care professionals a data-based voice with which to proclaim the powerful outcomes of care.