Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO) in Melbourne

The Royal Children's Hospital's (RCH) Vision is "A world where all kids thrive". RCH is a cornerstone member of the Melbourne Children's Campus, partnering with Murdoch Children's Research Institute, The University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics and The Royal Children's Hospital Foundation. RCH has cared for the children and young people of Victoria for more than 150 years since it was founded in 1870. A full range of paediatrics and adolescent health services are provided plus tertiary and quaternary care for the most critically ill and medically complex patients in Victoria, Tasmania, southern NSW and other states around Australia and overseas.

This is an ongoing full-time position within the Digital Innovation and EMR Team. The role is able to commence immediately. The CNIO is the executive nursing leader responsible for nursing informatics and digital nursing practice across RCH. Working in partnership with the Executive Chief Nursing Officer, the CNIO ensures digital strategy, EMR optimisation, data, analytics and AI align with nursing professional standards, workforce priorities and contemporary models of care.

The CNIO is a member of the Nursing Professional Council and contributes to organisation‐wide nursing strategy, governance, workforce capability and professional standards. The CNIO acts as the principal advisor to the Executive Chief Nursing Officer on digital nursing strategy, informatics, and emerging technologies.

The role provides the professional nursing leadership for informatics across the organisation, ensuring digital transformation advances nursing practice, professional standards, workforce capability and patient outcomes. The CNIO ensures the EMR and associated digital technologies support current and future nursing workflows, reduce documentation burden, and contribute to measurable improvements in the safety, quality, efficiency and experience of patient and family‐centred care.

The role champions the engagement of the nursing workforce in the use of data, technology and eHealth to deliver interoperable, patient‐centric, user‐friendly and evidence‐based care. The CNIO leads the nursing informatics team, sets the nursing digital health and informatics strategy, owns the nursing EMR governance and optimisation agenda, and builds a sustainable pipeline of nursing informatics capability through the Nursing Informatician role and the rotational Nursing Informatics Fellow program.

What you'll achieve:

• Provide, develop and lead the nursing digital health and informatics strategy across RCH, ensuring alignment of nursing and hospital strategy with clinical systems, data, analytics, AI and broader technological advancement.
• Lead planning, development and implementation of strategic and tactical clinical information systems and associated technologies to support current and future nursing workflows and models of care.
• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders including RCH and Parkville Executive, fellow CxIOs, the Executive Director Nursing Services, MCRI, The University of Melbourne and external digital health bodies.
• Represent nursing on Parkville EMR, campus and state‐wide digital health governance committees, and act as the senior nursing advocate for paediatric‐specific and nursing‐specific requirements in digital system design.
• Ensure compliance with RCH policies and financial responsibility according to delegations and budget parameters.

Team Leadership and Workforce Development:

• Lead the development of digital capability across the nursing workforce to support the use of digital technologies, analytics and AI to improve care delivery and career pathways.
• Contribute to professional nursing governance, career pathways and standards.
• Provide professional leadership, mentorship and supervision to the Nursing Informatician, and oversight of the rotational Nursing Informatics Fellow program.
• Sponsor and continuously improve the Nursing Informatics Fellowship as a development pathway that pairs informatics placements with clinical practice.
• Champion an innovation and learning culture through coaching, mentoring and guiding nursing staff across the organisation.

EMR and Clinical Systems:

• Lead the nursing EMR strategy, including governance, prioritisation, optimisation and benefits realisation for nursing workflows.
• Ensure the EMR and associated technologies support safe, efficient, high‐quality and patient and family‐centred nursing care.
• Identify opportunities to optimise nursing workflows, documentation, flowsheets, care plans and clinical decision support.
• Support incident review and system improvement where digital systems contribute to clinical risk.

Data, Analytics and AI:

• Provide senior nursing leadership for the hospital's data and analytics agenda.
• Work with nursing leadership to embed the use of reports, dashboards and Epic nurse utilisation data in operational decision‐making.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to create and test high‐impact, innovative digital and analytical approaches to care delivery.

Innovation and Models of Care:

• Contribute nursing leadership to digitally enabled models of care including virtual care and telehealth.
• Drive the use of My RCH Portal and other consumer‐facing digital tools to enable patient and family‐centred, connected care.

Capability, Education and Engagement:

• Provide executive sponsorship of the nursing EMR education curriculum and optimisation programs.
• Identify and respond to learning, development and training needs of nursing staff related to the EMR.
• Foster collaborative relationships with nursing staff across RCH, the Parkville precinct, MCRI, The University of Melbourne and external education providers.

Highly regarded:

• Masters level or higher postgraduate qualifications in nursing, health informatics, digital health, public health, data science or related fields.
• Experience in the evaluation, governance or deployment of AI and predictive analytics in healthcare.
• Experience in external digital health stakeholder engagement.