Welcome to IMIA!

General

The International Medical Informatics Association is an independent organization established under Swiss law in 1989. The organization was established in 1967 as Technical Committee 4 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). In 1979, it evolved from a Special Interest Group of IFIP to its current status as a fully independent organization. IMIA continues to maintain its relationship with IFIP as an affiliate organization.

The organization also has close ties with the World Health Organization (WHO) as a NGO (Non Government Organization).

The working language of IMIA is English.

Purpose, Goals, Objectives

IMIA plays a major global role in the application of information science and technology in the fields of healthcare and research in medical, health and bio informatics. The basic goals and objectives of the association are to:

• promote informatics in health care and research in health, bio and medical informatics.
• advance and nurture international cooperation.
• to stimulate research, development and routine application.
• move informatics from theory into practice in a full range of health delivery settings, from physician's office to acute and long term care.
• further the dissemination and exchange of knowledge, information and technology.
• promote education and responsible behaviour.
• represent the medical and health informatics field with the World Health Organization and other international professional and governmental organizations.

In its function as a bridge organization, IMIA's goals are:

• moving theory into practice by linking academic and research informaticians with care givers, consultants, vendors, and vendor-based researchers.
• leading the international medical and health informatics communities throughout the 21st century.
• promoting the cross-fertilization of health informatics information and knowledge across professional and geographical boundaries.
• serving as the catalyst for ubiquitous worldwide health information infrastructures for patient care and health research.

Membership

IMIA membership consists of National, Institutional and Affiliate Members and Honorary Fellows.

National Members represent individual countries. A member is a society, a group of societies, or an appropriate body, which is representative of the medical, and health informatics activities within that country. Where no representative societies exist, IMIA accommodates involvement through "Corresponding" members within developing countries.

National IMIA members may organize into regional groups. Currently, such regions exist for Latin America and the Caribbean (IMIA LAC), Europe (EFMI), Asia/Pacific (APAMI) and Africa (Helina); an initiative to structure a North American region was started in 2001.

Institutional Members consist of corporate and academic members. Corporate members include vendor, consulting, technology firms as well as national professional organizations. Academic members include universities, medical centres, research centres and like institutions.

Affiliate Members consist of international organizations that share an interest in the broad field of health and medical informatics.

Honorary Fellows are individuals who have earned exceptional merit in furthering the aims and interests of the IMIA; fellowship is conferred for life.

Governance

IMIA is governed by its General Assembly which consists of one representative from each IMIA member, Honorary Fellows, Chairs of IMIA’s Working Groups and a representative from IFIP, the World Health Organization, and each of IMIA's Regions. Only National Members have full voting rights. The General Assembly meets annually.

The Board of IMIA, elected by the General Assembly, conducts the association's affairs. The day-to-day operations are supported by the association's Executive Director who is also responsible for IMIA'S electronic services.

The officers of the Board and IMIA's vice presidents vigorously pursue IMIA's mission to:

• Monitor the range of special interest areas and focus support on new developments.
• Capitalize on the synergies and collective resources of IMIA's constituents.
• Minimize fragmentation between scientific and professional medical informaticians.
• Ensure successful adaptation to changes in the medical informatics marketplace and discipline.
• Raise the profile and awareness of IMIA within and outside of the IMIA organization.
• Encourage cooperation between the scientific and commercial health informatics communities.
• Equitably balance support to emerging and existing IMIA members.
• Establish and maintain cooperation and harmony with organizations that emerge to address medical informatics issues.
• Continue to position IMIA as the gatekeeper for medical informatics issues in the international community

Activities

MEDInfo's

IMIA organizes the internationally acclaimed tri-annual "World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics @, MEDInfo. MEDInfo - 2001, held in London, UK, September 2 - 5, 2001 at the newly developed Docklands area was hosted by the British Computer Society: Health Informatics Specialist Group. It was a highly successful scientific event.

MedINFO 2004 will be held at the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco, USA on September 7 —11, 2004. Potential participants and exhibitors are encouraged to visit their web site at www.medinfo2004.org. The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) hosts MedINFO 2004.

Previous MEDInfos have been held in Stockholm (1974), Toronto (1977), Tokyo (1980), Amsterdam (1983), Washington (1986), Beijing/Singapore (1989), Geneva (1992), Vancouver (1995) and Seoul (1998).

Working and Special Interest Groups

The IMIA family includes a growing number of Working and Special Interest Groups, which consist of individuals who share common interests in a particular focal field. The groups hold Working Conferences on leading edge and timely health and medical informatics issues.

Current and future activities of the Working and Special Interest Groups are posted on the IMIA Website at www.imia.org

Other Initiatives

In the next few years IMIA will focus on "bridging the knowledge gap" by facilitating and providing support to developing nations. Specific goals include supporting the ongoing development of the African Region, and, on a broader basis, the development of the "Virtual University", an ongoing initiative of IMIA’s working Group 1, Health and Medical Informatics Education.

IMIA reached a major milestone in completing a major redevelopment of its web-site www.imia.org. The site now contains profiles on its members, working groups and activities. The site uses a dynamic database to facilitate user-friendly communications for news, announcements, and an events calendar for the public, and access to e-mail communications, minutes, reports and association information for its members.

IMIA is constantly striving to further the services it provides to its members and the informatics community in general. The organization will expand its existing database in the support of the development of a Professional Resource Index, a database that will serve the purpose of providing access to the vast knowledge, skills and expertise of individuals who have participated in IMIA activities. Completion of this project is expected in 2002.

At the fall meeting of 2000, a task force was established by the General Assembly to develop an Ethical Code of Practice for adoption by IMIA. The resulting draft was reviewed by the General Assembly in the 2001 meeting, following detailed consultation with IMIA member countries it is planned that a formal draft will be submitted for approval in the fall of 2002. This work is being conducted under the umbrella of IMIA WG4 on Data Protection in Health Information Systems.

The goal of these initiatives is to provide the health professional and the patient with information when they need it, where they need it, and how they need it.