Abstract

The term E-nursing has been used to refer to the incorporation of ICT into nursing. Point-to-point connections using private networks are used by hospitals and clinics that deliver services directly or contract out specialty services to independent nursing service providers at ambulatory care sites. Radiology, mental health and even intensive care services are being provided under contract using Tele-nursing and telemedicine to deliver the services. An autonomous system manages complexity and improves the system complexity without interfering expert humans. The purpose of this paper is to present an autonomous virtual organization for e-nursing describing their characteristics, effects on quality factors, their building blocks architecture, and challenges.

Key words: E-Nursing, collaborative networks, information and communication technology (ICT), virtual organization breeding environment (VBE), autonomic computing, self-managing systems