NCSBN Research Initiative

Artificial Intelligence for Nursing Quality & Practice Improvement

A pioneering collaboration between UNLV's Computer Science and School of Nursing — applying natural language processing, transformer models, and machine learning to nursing administrative data to improve care quality, equity, and efficiency at scale.

2
Principal Investigators
CS + RN
Disciplines Bridged
NLP
Core Technology
NCSBN
Partner Organization

Where Nursing Science Meets Computational Intelligence

Nursing generates enormous volumes of structured and unstructured data — clinical notes, ICD-coded diagnoses, care plans, NCLEX performance records, and patient outcomes data. Yet most of it remains underutilized because extracting meaningful patterns requires specialized computational tools that most nursing researchers don't have access to.

This project directly addresses that gap. Dr. Fonseca brings deep expertise in natural language processing, health data pipelines, and transformer-based AI. Dr. Vanderlaan brings clinical nursing domain expertise, validated measurement tools, and population-level health data experience. Together, they are building the computational infrastructure and analytical frameworks nursing science has been waiting for.

"The most valuable insights in healthcare data are buried in complexity that only AI can unlock — if guided by clinical expertise."

In partnership with the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) — the organization that oversees nursing licensure and practice standards across the United States — this research has the potential to reshape how nursing quality is measured, monitored, and improved nationwide.

Clinical Notes ICD Codes NCLEX Outcomes Claims Policies AI AI + Nursing Science UNLV · NCSBN Partnership

Partnering with Nursing's National Standards Body

The National Council of State Boards of Nursing governs nursing practice and licensure for all 50 states — making it uniquely positioned to translate research into nationwide impact.

National Reach

NCLEX & Licensure Standards

NCSBN administers the NCLEX examination — the gateway to nursing practice — and sets competency standards across all U.S. jurisdictions. AI tools developed through this partnership have the potential for national-scale adoption.

Data Infrastructure

Rich Longitudinal Datasets

NCSBN maintains comprehensive longitudinal datasets on nursing education, licensure, and practice patterns across the U.S. — an unprecedented data asset for population-level AI analysis.

Policy Impact

Regulatory Influence

NCSBN findings directly inform state nursing boards, legislation, and workforce policy. Research conducted through this initiative can shape how nursing quality is regulated and improved nationwide.

What We're Building

Natural Language Processing

Clinical Text & Documentation Analysis

Nursing documentation — care plans, shift notes, discharge summaries — contains rich clinical insights that structured codes cannot capture. We apply BERT-based NLP models trained on healthcare text to automatically extract, classify, and analyze these narratives at population scale, identifying quality signals invisible to manual review.

Classification Systems

AI-Powered Nursing Diagnosis Classification

Nursing diagnoses represent a standardized taxonomy of patient conditions that guide care planning. We use transformer models — including BEHRT (BERT adapted for EHR data) — to automatically and accurately classify nursing diagnoses from ICD-coded administrative claims, enabling scalable quality measurement without manual coding.

Predictive Analytics

Outcome Prediction & Quality Flags

Using longitudinal patient and nurse data, we build predictive models that surface early warning signals for adverse outcomes, care gaps, and quality deficiencies — enabling proactive intervention before problems escalate. Models are designed to be clinically interpretable, not just accurate.

Data Engineering

Scalable Health Data Pipelines

Large nursing datasets — claims files, NCLEX records, state administrative data — require industrial-grade data engineering before any AI model can run. We design and build the ETL pipelines, data cleaning protocols, and storage architectures that make research possible at population scale.

The AI Analysis Pipeline

From raw administrative data to actionable nursing quality insights — a reproducible, scalable workflow.

Data Ingestion

Claims, NCLEX & state nursing records

Preprocessing

ETL, ICD normalization, de-ID

BEHRT / NLP

Transformer model encoding on clinical sequences

Classification

Nursing diagnoses, quality flags, risk scores

Insights

Policy reports, quality dashboards, publications

GPU-Accelerated at UNLV & Switch Cloud

All transformer model training runs on UNLV's 18-node NVIDIA RTX™ A4000 Data Analytics Lab and the $500K NSF-funded GPU cluster housed at the Switch Cloud Center in Las Vegas — providing the raw compute power required for large-scale BEHRT pre-training and fine-tuning on nursing data.

Two Experts, One Vision

This project works because it combines exactly the right expertise — neither researcher could do this alone.

Dr. Jorge Fonseca Cacho

Dr. Jorge Fonseca Cacho

Co-Investigator · Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Dr. Fonseca specializes in NLP, health informatics, and AI systems design. He has developed AR indoor navigation systems (AIVR 2022), health applications with NSF and HEERF II funding, and data pipelines for the Walk2School2Day mobile app. His expertise in transformer models and scalable data engineering provides the computational backbone for this nursing AI initiative.

NLP & Transformers Health Data Pipelines AI Systems AR / ML Research

WHAT FONSECA BRINGS

NLP model development · Data pipeline architecture · GPU cluster management · AI engineering · Model interpretability

Dr. Jennifer Vanderlaan

Dr. Jennifer Vanderlaan

Principal Investigator · Associate Professor, School of Nursing

A certified nurse-midwife with a PhD in Nursing and Master's in Public Health (Emory University), Dr. Vanderlaan is a national authority on maternal health data, nursing workforce policy, and clinical quality measurement. Her validated methods for identifying high-risk patients in administrative data are foundational to the AI models this project develops.

Maternal Health Clinical Measurement Health Policy AHRQ-Funded

WHAT VANDERLAAN BRINGS

Clinical domain expertise · Validated nursing measures · NCSBN relationships · Research design · Health policy translation

Why This Partnership Works

The fundamental challenge in applying AI to nursing is the gap between computational capability and clinical validity. An AI model that classifies nursing diagnoses inaccurately — even subtly — can lead to wrong policy conclusions. Dr. Vanderlaan's clinical expertise serves as the essential validation layer, ensuring that every model we build is grounded in nursing science, not just statistical patterns. Dr. Fonseca ensures that the computational tools are production-grade, reproducible, and scalable. Neither could do this work effectively without the other.

Built on a Legacy of CS Excellence at UNLV

The UNLV Department of Computer Science has a long history of funded research, product development, and interdisciplinary collaboration that makes this nursing AI initiative possible. From the Department of Energy's Licensing Support Network to NSF-funded educational technology, UNLV CS has been solving complex data challenges for decades.

Data Analytics Lab

18 workstations each equipped with NVIDIA RTX™ A4000 GPUs — the most powerful single-slot professional GPU — for concurrent model development and training.

NSF GPU Cluster at Switch

A $500K GPU cluster funded through NSF, housed at the Switch Cloud Center in Las Vegas, providing on-demand high-performance computing for large-scale model training.

Student Research Team

Graduate and undergraduate researchers from UNLV CS contribute to data engineering, model development, and testing — making this project a training ground for the next generation of health AI researchers.

Prior Funded Work

A Track Record of AI + Health Collaboration

Fonseca and Taghva previously received funding from the UNLV School of Public Health (Walk2School2Day app) and the Office of Economic Development — demonstrating the department's capacity for interdisciplinary health technology projects. Dr. Fonseca's AIVR 2022 paper on OCR-enhanced AR navigation further illustrates the team's applied AI capabilities.

NSF Grant · Active

STEM Math Skills & AI (NSF 222522)

Dr. Fonseca is currently Senior Personnel on a $999,815 NSF grant developing AI-powered educational games to improve STEM math skills — providing additional infrastructure and student researcher experience that directly supports nursing AI development.

Part of a Larger Research Ecosystem

Related Project

APCD Maternal Health Research

Dr. Vanderlaan's parallel project with Dr. Taghva applies the same population-level data approach — using Virginia's All-Payer Claims Database — to study severe maternal morbidity and risk-appropriate care.

Explore APCD project
Published Paper

Nursing Diagnosis Classification with AI

The published research paper emerging from this collaboration — using BEHRT and transformer models to automatically classify nursing diagnoses from administrative claims data.

Learn more

Bringing AI to Nursing: Let's Talk

We're interested in collaborating with nursing schools, state boards of nursing, healthcare systems, and clinical researchers who want to harness AI for quality improvement.

Contact the Team All Research