IMIA General Assembly – Hiroshima, November 25 2009

The annual meeting of IMIA members, the IMIA General Assembly, will be held on November 25, 2009 at the Hiroshima Institute of Technology (Hiroshima City Campus), Hiroshima, Japan. It will be preceded by the IMIA Board meeting on 24 November. Both events are by invitation only, which all members should have received. For any queries, please contact imia[at]imia-services.org

Information is available on the IMIA website at http://www.imia.org/members/assembly/reports/imia_reports_new.lasso

The two meetings are being held in conjunction with the CoMHI 2009 events (http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/humind1/comhi2009/index.html).

Arie Hasman farewell symposium – Amsterdam, January 15, 2010

After a 35 year international career in the field of biomedical informatics, Arie Hasman will retire by the end of 2009. In his honour, and to recognise Arie’s contributions to the biomedical informatics field, a farewell conference/symposium will be held on Friday, January 15, 2010 (from 12:00 – 19:00) in the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

If you would like to attend this conference, or would like further information about the arrangements for this event, please send an e-mail to afscheid.hasman[at]gmail.com

Starting his career in biomedical informatics in 1974 at the Free University of Amsterdam, Arie Hasman has been active in many national and international research and educational projects, including several EU funded projects. He was editor of the International Journal of Medical Informatics and is still a member of the Editorial Boards of several journals. After chairing the department of Medical Informatics at the University of Maastricht for 16 years, he was appointed chair of the Department of Medical Informatics of the Academic Medical Centre – University of Amsterdam in 2004. He is (co)author of about 250 publications and a number of books in the areas of signal analysis, image analysis, information systems, knowledge based systems and computer aided instruction.

IMIA Health Information Systems WG event – Sept. 2010

Christian Lovis, chair of the IMIA Health Information Systems Working Group (IMIA HIS WG), has announced that the WG will be organising a two day workshop on Health Information Systems – 30 Years of Evolution, that will take place just before the Medinfo 2010 Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Christian notes that 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.

The event is scheduled to be held on September 10-12, 2010 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Further details will be advised in due course.

At the two-day conference, several of the pioneers in the field will be present, together with new talent; there will be three plenary sessions, discussion groups and invited speakers, and the outcomes of the conference will be reported during a panel at Medinfo.

Some you may have missed – 23 October 2009

An overdue post in our irregular round-ups of health and biomedical informatics news items culled from a range of sources.  (All links are for information only, and do not imply any IMIA endorsement of any item or view expressed).

Automated external defibrillator (AED) and augmented reality – Lucien Engelen from the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands launched AED4EU – users can add places where AEDs are located and the database can be accessed through a new application, AED4EU, on mobile phones (eg Android via Layar reality browser) or on Twitter. 20 October on Berci Mesko’s Scienceroll.

HIMSS Launches HIMSS Facebook Fan Page – The newly launched HIMSS Facebook Fan Page (which will replace the HIMSS Facebook Group) will allow users to get direct news and event updates to their Facebook Walls, as well as other features, including event groups, photos, discussions, links and more. 15 October on HIMSS News.

Trendsmap in Medicine= Google Maps + Twitter Trends – Trendsmap, the combination of Google Maps and Twitter trends, provides possibilities for tracking diseases through an interactive map by using the information uploaded by people from around the world. 04 October on Berci Mesko’s Scienceroll.

EHI celebrates 400th newsletter – E-Health Insider has issued the 400th edition of its weekly healthcare IT newsletter; distributed to more than 24,000 people, including policy makers, suppliers, IT teams, clinicians and others with an interest in healthcare IT and the use of information in the (mainly UK) health services. 22 October, from E-Health Insider.

NIH Awards New Grants To Build Capacity In Informatics In Global Health – The Fogarty International Center, part of the National Institutes of Health, announced it will award more than $9.23 million to eight global health informatics programs over the next five years to increase informatics expertise in low- and middle-income countries by training scientists to design information systems and apply computer-supported management and analysis to biomedical research. 16 October on Medical News Today.  Note also the Informatics Training for Global Health (ITGH) website >>>

12 iPhone : EMR , PHR and Patient Trackers applications - A blog post summarising a range of currently available applications. 12 October on Goomedic Informatics Portal.

AMIA2009 – some international highlights

The AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) 2009 Annual Symposium takes place on November 14-18. This year it will be held at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, 333 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco, California, USA; full information on the event is on the website (http://symposium2009.amia.org) and there is a searchable programme and online itinerary planner (http://amiaannual2009.abstractcentral.com/login).

As every year, there are too many highlights to mention – and many presentations and activities with a specific international flavour for both those with an interest in global and international aspects of health and biomedical informatics and international participants. Among these are:

Experiences and Challenges in Global Health Informatics – a panel to include presentations on the Saudi Arabia National Guard Electronic Disease Surveillance Systems (NGEDSS), Millennium Global Village-Network (MGV-Net), mobile e-health in the Mekong Basin of Southeast Asia for the detection and reporting of public health events, and the informatics strategy to support the new Joslin Dubai Diabetes Center.

AsiaPac Informatics—Update on Informatics Activities from Pacific Rim Countries – panelists from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan discussing the current state of informatics and eHealth in their region.

A poster theme of 20/20 Global e-Health Informatics Capacity Building.

The invitational International Reception for international participants.

OpenMRS: Success and Challenges for EHRs in Resource-Poor Settings – a panel discussing specific case studies, successes and future applications.

International Workshop on e-Health in Emerging Economies, 2010

The three-day workshop IWEEE 2010: the human factor – International Workshop on e-Health in Emerging Economies will be held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain on February 10-12, 2010. The event is being supported by, and has collaboration from, the IMIA Open Source Health Informatics Working Group.

Among the presenters will be Thomas Karopka, vice-chair of the International Medical Informatics Association Open Source Working Group (IMIA OS WG) and chair of the European Federation for Medical Informatics Libre/Free Open Source Working Group (EFMI LIFOSS WG), and Alvin Marcelo, the Philippine representative to the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI) and the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and chair of the IMIA Health Informatics for Development Working Group.

Full information is on the workshop website at http://www.iweee.org/index.html

HINZ2010 dates – and HINZ2009 downloads

Health Informatics New Zaland (HINZ – http://www.hinz.org.nz) had a very successful 2009 conference on 30 September – 2 October. Presentations, posters, photos and videos from the event are currently being uploaded and all will soon be available through the HINZ conference website (http://www.hinz.org.nz/page/conference/conference-2009-post) – most presentations from HINZ 2009 are now available for viewing on Slideshare and all papers are available for download.

HINZ2010 will take place on 2-4 November, 2010 in Wellington, New Zealand. Further information will be available in due course on the HINZ website.

METHODS of Information in Medicine, Volume 48, Issue 5

METHODS of Information in Medicine is an official journal of IMIA.

Volume 48, Issue 5 is available at: http://www.methods-online.com

The IMIA news pages in ‘Methods’ are available as a free download at >>>

SPECIAL TOPIC – EDITORIAL

Bridging from Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology to Medical Engineering
I. Zöllner , R. Klar

SPECIAL TOPIC – ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Automatic Brain Segmentation in Time-of-Flight MRA Images
N. D. Forkert, D. Säring, J. Fiehler, T. Illies, D. Möller, H. Handels

CDISC Standard-based Electronic Archiving of Clinical Trials
W. Kuchinke, J. Aerts, S. C. Semler, C. Ohmann

Integration of Decentralized Clinical Data in a Data Warehouse
: A Service-oriented Design and Realization
S. Hanß, T. Schaaf, T. Wetzel, C. Hahn, T. Schrader, T. Tolxdorff

Applicability of Lewin´s Change Management Model in a Hospital Setting
J. Suc, H.-U. Prokosch, T. Ganslandt

Evaluation of Record Linkage Methods for Iterative Insertions
M. Sariyar, A. Borg, K. Pommerening

Efficient Risk Set Sampling when a Time-dependent Exposure Is Present
: Matching for Time to Exposure Versus Exposure Density Sampling
M. Wolkewitz, J. Beyersmann, P. Gastmeier, M. Schumacher

Physical Activity and Postmenopausal Breast Cancer
: Effect Modification by Other Breast Cancer Risk Factors
M. E. Schmidt, J. Chang-Claude, T. Slanger, N. Obi, D. Flesch-Janys, K. Steindorf

The Human Ecology of Malaria in a Highland Region of South-West Kenya
S. Githinji, S. Herbst, T. Kistemann

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

An Inventory of Publications on Electronic Medical Records Revisited
P. W. Moorman, M. J. Schuemie, J. van der Lei

Assessing Applicability of Ontological Principles to Different Types of Biomedical Vocabularies
J. Ingenerf, R. Linder

Exploiting Thesauri Knowledge in Medical Guideline Formalization
R. Serban, A. ten Teije

PDA Usage by Japanese Resident Physicians Is Low
: A Cross-sectional Survey
J. L. Jacobs, O. Takahashi, S. Ohde, Y. Tokuda, F. Omata, T. Fukui

Assessing the Quality of Activities in a Smart Environment
D. J. Cook, M. Schmitter-Edgecombe

Prediction of Countershock Success
: A Comparison of Autoregressive and Fast Fourier Transformed Spectral Estimators
C. N. Nowak, G. Fischer, A. Neurauter, L. Wieser, H. U. Strohmenger

Virtual Reality Simulator for the Training of Lumbar Punctures
M. Färber, F. Hummel, C. Gerloff, H. Handels

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Methods of Information in Medicine is official journal of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).

Now available: free full text online access for all subscribers of the print edition: >>>

IMIA members please link to <http://www.schattauer.de/order_methods.html> to order your subscription online

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Copyright (c) 2009 by Schattauer GmbH Verlag für Naturwissenschaften

Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) ejournal launches

Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) is a new official eJournal of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS), and will be published by Schattauer. Full information about this new development, including instructions for authors, can found at the journal website – www.aci-journal.org

ACI aims to establish a platform for knowledge sharing between clinical medicine and health IT specialists, and further intends to bridge the gap between visionary design and successful and pragmatic deployment. The core editorial subject matters of ACI include clinical information systems (including but not limited to electronic medical records and systems, personal health records, electronic prescribing, nursing information systems, and GP information systems); administrative and management systems; eHealth systems; information technology development, deployment and evaluation; socio-technical aspects of information technology and health IT training.

ACI will publish approximately 100 peer reviewed articles per year online. The target audience of ACI is an international and influential readership, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Medical Informatics Researchers, Nurse Informaticians, Consultants, Public Health Officials, Vendors and IT Safety Healthcare Providers.

For further information on this new online journal, contact the Editor-in-Chief Christoph U. Lehmann, MD, Johns Hopkins University, at clehmann(at)jhmi.edu

Download information document:   ACI-Invite

UPDATE, 14 October 2009: Christoph Lehmann, Editor-in-Chief of ACI, reports “we published the first editorial in Applied Clinical Informatics entitled “In search of dialogue and discourse in applied clinical informatics”. This is available for free download via the ACI website, direct at >>> The editorial presents a “model of applied clinical informatics in the context of medical informatics in general, across the domain of health sciences and the continuum of information technology development and its adoption into workflow”. It discusses foundational (or ‘pure’) and applied informatics in the health domain, discusses informatics as human activity and process, and explores informatics as “a collaborative and iterative intellectual activity”.

BCS Health Informatics Forum – HINow and HC2010

The latest edition (volume 4, no. 1 – September 2009) of HINow (or Health Informatics Now), the publication of the British Computer Society Health Informatics Forum (BCSHIF) is available to download from the BCS website (pdf file at  http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conMediaFile.11402). It is a special issue featuring reports and reflections from the NI2009 nursing informatics congress held in Helsinki, Finland.

HC2010, the BCSHIF annual health informatics congress, will take place on 27-29 April, 2010 at the ICC, Birmingham, UK (http://www.hcshowcase.org/). The call for participation closes on 30 November, 2009 and is available at http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.32474