At the 2001 General Assembly of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) in London, IMIA approved the establishment of a Medical Informatics Award of Excellence. The Award will be given every three years in conjunction with a MedInfo Year.

The recipient of this Medical Informatics Award of Excellence is an individual whose personal commitment and dedication to medical informatics has made a lasting contribution to medicine and healthcare through her or his achievements in research, education, development or application in the field of medical informatics.

The first award was jointly given by IMIA and UMIT, the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology at Innsbruck/Hall, Austria. The Award consists of a diploma and a prize amount of 4,000 EUR. The diploma contains the mission statements of IMIA and UMIT. The winner of the award will give an Award Lecture at a plenary session at the next World Congress of Medical Informatics (MedInfo).

Prof. François Grémy First Recipient

The first IMIA/UMIT Medical Informatics Award of Excellence was given in 2004 during a ceremony at MedInfo 2004 in San Francisco. The recipient was selected by a Nominating Committee consisting of two members, nominated by IMIA - IMIA President Prof. KC Lun, Singapore, and IMIA Vice-President for MedInfos, Prof. Patrice Degoulet, Paris - and two members, nominated by UMIT - UMIT Rector Prof. Reinhold Haux, Innsbruck, and Prof. Casimir Kulikowski, New Brunswick, Adjunct Faculty of UMIT - (positions as during the time of nomination, they have now partially changed).

The Nomination Committee unanimously decided for Prof. François Grémy, Uzes, France, one of the founders of IMIA and an outstanding pioneer of the field of medical informatics. The award celebration took place at September, 11, 2004 at MedInfo 2004 in San Francisco, CA culminating with Prof. Grémy’s Medical Informatics Award of Excellence Lecture, entitled “Hardware, Software, Peopleware, Subjectivity: A Philosophical Promenade“ which will be published jointly with other papers on his work in one of the 2005 issues of Methods of Information in Medicine.

The IMIA/UMIT Medical Informatics Award of Excellence Diploma