Connie White Delaney, PhD, RN, FACMI, FNAP, FAAN, is Professor & Dean, University of Minnesota School of Nursing.

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Dr. Delaney is a globally renowned leader in nursing informatics and health care innovation. With a career spanning more than five decades, she has been instrumental in shaping the integration of informatics into nursing education, research, and practice. Dr. Delaney’s work has transformed the field of nursing informatics and elevated the role of nurses in the digital age.

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Since 2005, Dr. Delaney has served as Dean and Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. Under her visionary leadership, the school has risen to national prominence, particularly for its informatics-focused Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program, the first of its kind in the U.S., and is now ranked among the top informatics DNP programs nationwide. Her commitment to integrating data science into nursing education has equipped thousands of nurses with the competencies to drive technology-enhanced, evidence-informed care.

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A trailblazer in nursing informatics, Dr. Delaney was among the first to extract and code nursing data from electronic health records, leading to the implementation of the Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS) and development of the Nursing Management Minimum Data Set. She chaired the American Nurses Association’s Nursing Informatics Data Set Evaluation Committee and served on the International Council of Nurses’ steering committee for the International Classification of Nursing Practice, which gained recognition by the World Health Organization.

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Her international influence includes decades-long faculty collaborations with the University of Iceland and involvement in the global expansion of standardized nursing terminologies and informatics education. She cofounded the Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI), now representing over 25,000 nurse informaticists across 29 organizations. Dr. Delaney also helped lead the TIGER Initiative (Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform), setting national standards for informatics curricula in nursing schools.

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In 2013, she launched the influential Nursing Knowledge Big Data Science (NKBDS) Conference, now a central platform for advancing nursing informatics research, policy, and practice. With over 160 publications and 270 presentations stemming from the conference’s workgroups, NKBDS has become a nexus of innovation in digital health and nursing data science.

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Dr. Delaney’s leadership extends into health policy and advocacy. She served as an inaugural appointee to the Federal Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy Committee, advising the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on national HIT infrastructure. She also chairs the American Academy of Nursing’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Taskforce, guiding ethical integration of AI into nursing practice as well as serving as the Academy’s representative to the National Academy of Medicine’s Clinicians’ Forum on AI in Health & Medicine.

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Committed to health equity, Dr. Delaney co-founded the Minnesota Center for Equity and Excellence in Nursing, addressing workforce diversity, and shortages through strategic academic-practice partnerships and apprenticeships. She also founded the Centers for Indigenous People’s Health, Planetary Health and Environmental Justice, and Flourishing Healthcare Communities, each of which reflect her commitment for holistic, just, and sustainable health care systems.

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Dr. Delaney is the author of six books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Her numerous accolades include induction into the Sigma Theta Tau Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, the American Medical Informatics Association Virginia K. Saba Informatics Award, and the 2024 HIMSS-ANI Nursing Informatics Leadership Award.

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Dr. Delaney holds a BSN with majors in nursing and mathematics from Viterbo University, as well as a MA in Nursing and a PhD in Educational Administration and Computer Applications from the University of Iowa. She was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 1998. Dr. Delaney’s enduring contributions have fundamentally shaped the profession of nursing and its future in an increasingly digital world. Her legacy is one of visionary leadership, unwavering advocacy for equity and excellence, and a commitment to innovation that continues to inspire the global nursing community.