Annual research conference

Smart tech, human touch

Nurses and midwives are redefining care delivery through the strategic use of artificial intelligence, telemedicine, wearable devices, and data-driven decision-making. This sub-theme explores how technology can dismantle inefficiencies, personalise care, and support earlier interventions, while ensuring that digital tools remain ethical, inclusive, and centred on human connection.

Abstracts submitted under this theme might, for example, examine areas such as:

• Gaps in digital infrastructure and interoperability of health records
• Cybersecurity threats to patient data
• Challenging misinformation and ‘alternative facts’
• Ethical issues in AI-driven diagnosis and genetic testing
• Escalating expenses or cost savings from new technologies
• Affordability challenges for both governments and individuals
• Smarter ways to provide care or enable self-care.

Health without borders

From challenging bureaucratic bottlenecks to addressing inequities, nurses and midwives are advocating for systemic reform. This sub-theme focuses on dismantling structural barriers that limit access to quality care, leveraging digital platforms and mobile health solutions to reach underserved populations, and ensuring no one is left behind in the transformation of healthcare.

Abstracts submitted under this theme might, for example, examine areas such as:

• Mistrust in healthcare systems
• Language and cultural gaps between providers and patients
• Stigma around mental health, communicable diseases, and certain disabilities
• Unequal distribution of care between urban and rural areas, and between wealthy and low-income populations
• Barriers due to geography, cost, or infrastructure – especially in low and middle-income countries
• Care delivered closer to, or in, the home
• Social prescribing and community-based resources
• Disparities in specialist availability and diagnostic tools
• Improving pathways, processes and flow.

Healthy people, healthy planet

Healthcare cannot thrive on a dying planet. This sub-theme positions nurses and midwives as leaders in creating climate-conscious healthcare systems – reducing environmental footprints, promoting sustainable practices, and linking planetary health to patient well-being. It examines how digital tools, remote care, and resource-efficient technologies can contribute to healthier communities and ecosystems.

Abstracts submitted under this theme might, for example, examine areas such as:

• Increasing rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and obesity
• Lifestyle factors such as poor diet, physical inactivity, tobacco, alcohol, stress
• Long-term treatment needs and effect on healthcare budgets
• Current and emerging threats (e.g. COVID-19, Ebola, drug-resistant TB)
• Vaccine hesitancy and uneven distribution of immunisations
• Weak public health surveillance in some regions
• Effect of air pollution, heatwaves, and extreme weather on health
• Climate-driven migration affecting health access and stability
• Spread of vector-borne diseases (e.g. malaria, dengue) to new areas.

Future-ready, patient-focused

Resilience is built through adaptability, innovation, and interprofessional collaboration. It is also built by investing in the initial and continued education of nurses and midwives, and by ensuring we can work to the top of our license. This sub-theme explores how nurses and midwives are embracing emerging technologies, cross-sector partnerships, and new models of care to meet the demands of evolving health crises. It highlights how integrating AI, simulation, and virtual learning can future-proof the workforce while maintaining the human touch.

Abstracts submitted under this theme might, for example, examine areas such as:

• Global shortage nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals
• Lateral violence, bullying, incivility
• Burnout and high turnover
• Migration of healthcare workers from low-resource countries to higher-income nations
• Conflict zones disrupting health services
• Economic downturns reducing healthcare funding
• Corruption or inefficiency in health resource allocation
• Growing demand for long-term care, care of the elderly expertise, and palliative care
• Educational needs of health workers
• Recognising the value of health workers.

Dr Siobhán O'Connor is a Senior Lecturer in the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King’s College London. She also holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship at Western University, Canada and is a Liaison to the United Nations (UN) for Sigma Nursing.

Dr O'Connor has a multidisciplinary background with bachelor's degrees in nursing and information systems, completing her PhD in health informatics, and has nearly 20 years' combined experience in industry, clinical practice, and higher education. She also served as an external advisor on the World Health Organization (WHO) on the WHO's State of the World's Nursing Report 2025 providing recommendations on digital nursing education and practice.

Her research focuses on co-designing, implementing and evaluating technologies in healthcare, with a particular interest in mobile health and other digital innovations that can support patient self-management. She also leads the AI Nurses Network, a clinical research network on artificial intelligence in nursing.