Dr. Dana Womack is one of the most credentialed voices at the intersection of clinical nursing practice and healthcare informatics in the United States. Her career spans more than 30 years, beginning as a registered nurse working across 12 acute care hospitals and progressing through technology roles at Intel and Deloitte, federal health IT consulting, academic research at Oregon Health and Science University, and her current work as an independent clinical informatics consultant.
What makes Dana’s perspective unique is the completeness of her vantage point. She has been the nurse at the bedside, the informaticist designing the system, the researcher studying the data, and the consultant implementing the technology. That full-spectrum experience makes her a trusted voice on the gap between what clinical technology promises and what it actually delivers in the real world.
As a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA), one of the highest designations in the informatics field, Dana is recognized for her contributions to applying informatics to clinical practice and research. She served on the AMIA 2022 Clinical Informatics Conference Scientific Program Committee and has published research on nurse workload strain detection, ambient data in healthcare, EHR-generated work intensity, and telehealth outcomes.
Her most widely cited work explores how non-EHR and ambient data streams, what she describes as ‘digital dust,’ can be used to identify nurse strain and burnout before it affects patient care. This research has direct relevance to connected health platforms and remote monitoring environments, where data-driven early detection is central to the mission.
Dana contributes expert perspective to Lifeline on clinical workflows and data integration, AI in care delivery, nurse workload and system resilience, ambient data applications, human-centered design for healthcare technology, and the clinical science behind connected care solutions for aging and at-risk populations.
