Friday, September 3, 2010
IMIA Working Groups
Last updated: 08/23/2010
Health Information Systems
Founded: 1983
Membership: 100
http://www.med.uni-marburg.de/imi/IMIA_WG10.html
Chair   Term of Office: 2006 - 2012
Lovis, Prof. Dr. Christian , MD, MPH
Head, Unit of Clinical Informatics
University Hospitals of Geneva
Geneva 14 Switzerland CH 1211
+41 22 372 6180
+41 22 372 8680
Vice-Chair   Term of Office: 2006 - 2012
Aronsky, Dr. Dominik , MD, PhD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Nashville TN USA 3732-8340
+ 1 615 936 1068
Goals & Objectives

Next meeting:

The IMIA Health Information Systems Working Group will be organising a two day workshop on "Health Information Systems  30 Years of Evolution". The event is scheduled to be held on September 10-12, 2010 in Stellenbosch, South Africa, just before the Medinfo 2010 Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Further details will be advised in due course.

2010 is a very important date for the IMIA Health Information Systems (HIS) WG, and Cape Town a very special place. In 1979, the first HIS working conference was held in Cape Town, South Africa. As a result of that conference the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) created a working group on hospital information systems. That working group has since organised a series of working conferences (Nijmegen, Gottingen, Durham, Heidelberg) of which the proceedings have been published.

As the next World Congress on Medical Informatics, Medinfo, will take place in September 2010 in Cape Town (http://www.medinfo2010.org/), this offers a unique opportunity to have another HIS working conference in conjunction with Medinfo where the evolution over a 30-year period can be discussed and challenges for the coming decade identified.

(See http://imianews.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/imia-health-information-systems-wg-event-sept-2010/ for first announcement).


Objectives:
- Promote systematic development and research in the field of health information systems;
- Promote research and efforts on efficiency and cost-effectiveness of health information systems for the healthcare, health delivery and access to health;
- Promote research and development in the domain of sustainability in health information systems;
- Promote evaluation, identify and assess problems and success factors of health information systems.

Recent Activities:

The WG, under the leadership of the previous WG chairs, Prof. Klaus Kuhn and Dario Giuse, held a successful conference from July 2-4, 2006, in Oeiras, near Lisbon, Portugal in cooperation with the IMIA WG Telematics in Healthcare. It was hosted by INA, the Portuguese Instituto Nacional de Administração, an institutional member of IMIA, with the theme of "Expanding the Scope of Health Information Systems from Hospitals to Regional Networks, to National Infrastructures, and Beyond".

The conference focussed on concepts to improve health care by exchanging, sharing, and reusing data between health care institutions on all levels of care. Central challenges addressed were interoperability, ubiquitous access, common data models and terminologies, political mandates and lack of continuity, as well as related socio-technical aspects. International speakers presented experiences and concepts, which were further discussed in working groups. A special issue of Methods of Information in Medicine will appear to distribute the results of the presentations and of the discussion groups.

Upcoming Activities:

The WG will have a meeting at Medinfo2007, in Brisbane, Wednesday Aug 26th. The WG meeting will brainstorm and discuss about major objectives to develop the activities over the next years. Plans include a discussion about holding a WG conference in the next couple of years for which identification of substantial funding resources will be necessary. If possible the IMIA WG meeting will be used to identify an organizing committee.

The WG aims to develop a website, having a forum, and try to build up a Skype (or equivalent) community.

Interested in joining this group? Click HERE to enquire.