IMIA and GHIP Agree Strategic Alliance on Global Collaboration

IMIA and GHIP (Global Health Informatics Partnership – www.ghip.net) have signed a Letter of Understanding (LoU) to collaborate globally to help empower health workers to act locally to improve health and health care delivery.

The LoU outlines a strategic alliance to:

* Facilitate the development of local workforce capacity for biomedical and health informatics to support applications in public health, clinical care, and research;
* Develop targeted support– with educational material based on best practices–of public health and clinical decision-makers, health workers, and technicians who work in HICT systems;
* Evaluate current infrastructure and policies to ensure a positive environment is built for HICT and informatics education/information dissemination. strengthen health information and communication (HICT) systems, create learning modules appropriate for a wide variety of workers in public health and clinical roles, and facilitate infrastructures and policies that support sustained investment in HICT and informatics at the global level.

The alliance also will support the development of local and regional centers of excellence in health informatics. The LoU was signed in Washington, DC by IMIA President Antoine Geissbuhler and AMIA President and CEO Ted Shortliffe during AMIA’s recently held 34th Annual Symposium on Biomedical and Health Informatics.

Dr. Geissbuhler observed, “Achieving these goals requires intensified international collaboration as well as development and strengthening of local and regional centers of excellence in health informatics so that they are able to support local projects while being connected globally.” “The new strategic alliance between IMIA and GHIP enables an international approach to health informatics collaboration that draws upon a global range of expertise,” said Dr. Shortliffe.

GHIP is an international learning community that engages institutional stakeholders as well as a broad range of interested professionals. It is dedicated to knowledge-transfer activities and supports a collaborative ecosystem for initiatives focused on individuals who are developing solutions to problems in real-world settings, guided by established informatics principles. GHIP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AMIA.

The full media release can be seen at http://www.ghip.net/news and on the AMIA website at https://www.amia.org/files/IMIA-GHIP-release-113010.pdf