Summer School on Modern Methods in Biostatistics and Epidemiology: Italy, June 2015

The 2015 Edition of the Summer School on Modern Methods in Biostatistics and Epidemiology (http://www.biostatepi.org) will be held on June 7 to June 20, 2015 at Castello Brandolini Colomban, Cison di Valmarino – Treviso – Italy.

Registration is now open and the deadline for early registration is March 31^st 2015. Please visit the course homepage for more information on the courses and for details on registration: http://www.biostatepi.org

The School aims to provide introductory and advanced courses in medical statistics and epidemiology, and their application in etiology research and public health. The School is aimed at physicians, clinicians and public health professionals from public and private institutions who are looking for systematic training in the principles of epidemiology and biostatistics, or epidemiology applied to health care planning and evaluation. They will acquire familiarity with epidemiological and biostatistical principles and techniques and with the computational tools needed to solve practical problems.

The course teachers come from Harvard School of Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Bocconi University and University of Milano-Bicocca. Funding is kindly provided by Bocconi University and Stata®. Limited student tuition scholarships are available for current university students.; all queries should be addressed to the Summer School organisers, not to IMIA.

Please visit the course homepage for more information about the course: http://www.biostatepi.org or send an email to bioepiedu[at]ki.se

Enrollment application forms and other contact and query information is on the Summer School website at http://www.biostatepi.org/general_info.htm

IMIA VP Prof. Christoph Lehmann Appointed to US HIT Policy Committee

Prof. Christoph U. Lehmann, MD, IMIA Vice President Services, has been appointed to the Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy Committee as an expert on vulnerable populations. He is a Professor in Pediatrics and Biomedical Informatics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University, and brings an important point of view as the first pediatrician appointed by GAO to the HIT Policy Committee. His research interests include medication monitoring for vulnerable pediatric populations, and he has developed clinical safety applications that have reduced medical errors in the ordering of pediatric medications and treatments. He is also Editor-in-Chief of ACI (Applied Clinical Informatics), an IMIA Official Journal. Further information on his and other appointments is at http://www.gao.gov/press/appointments_hitpc_2014apr29.htm

ICANN and Safeguards for Health Domains

IMIA, together with several other NGOs with specific interest in health and informatics, have expressed concern to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – www.icann.org) about the allocation of the new Internet domain names, and in particular that the proposed generic safeguards for health-related names are not adequate. They, and other organisations and individuals, are calling on the ICANN Board to delay the allocation of .health and other health-related names until adequate safeguards, and baseline conditions for their implementation, are in place.

We ask that any other individuals and organisations who share such concerns should also urgently write to the ICANN Board, expressing these concerns. A draft letter, which can be customised as people see fit, is attached here.

A letter published in The Lancet in October 2013 outlines some of the issues (http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2962215-1/fulltext). In addition, the World Health Assembly (WHA), meeting in Geneva in May 2013, adopted a new resolution on eHealth standardization and interoperability, which also addressed the .health generic top level domain name (gTLD). The full text of the resolution (WHA 66.24) is available through the World Health Organization (WHO) website at http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA66/A66_R24-en.pdf In relation to the issue of new health domains, it urges Member States ” to consider ways for ministries of health and public health authorities to work with their national representatives on the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee in order to coordinate national positions towards the delegation, governance and operation of health-related global top-level domain names in all languages, including “.health”, in the interest of public health.”

Some background information on the issues, and current status, is at: http://icannwiki.com/index.php/.health

Children’s of Pittsburgh (CHP) of UPMC Seeks CMIO

This vacancy may be of interest to IMIA members and colleagues. Please feel free to forward it within your organisations and contacts.

The Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC) is conducting a formal international search, and seeking to recruit a Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) who “will be the lead physician for all pediatric medical IT and informatics spanning the entire CHP and UPMC enterprise.” Full information is available in the downloadable position criteria document (PDF file, 1.7MB).

All questions should be directed to David Reusser, Partner, The Ransom Group, Incorporated, Executive Search Consultants (email reusser[at]theransomgroup.com – full contact details in the PDF file), and not to IMIA.

IMIA News – 2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

In 2013, the IMIA News site provided 139 new posts, so now has an archive of 765 news items.

The busiest single day of the year for traffic was October 24th; the most popular post that day was The Pioneer of Health Informatics in Saudi Arabia Moves On.

Among the posts and pages with the most views in 2013 were:

1. Medical Informatics Journals: 2010 Impact Factors (written July 2011)
2. eHealth Week 2013 (World of Health IT) – Dublin, Ireland: 13-15 May (written January 2013)
3. 4th Middle East Conference on Healthcare Informatics: Dubai, UAE – 22-24 April, 2013 (written December 2012)

This demonstrates the longevity and continuing interest in, and relevance of, some of the items we have produced.

The top referring sites in 2013 (after search engines) were (once again) twitter.com, facebook.com and the IMIA website – and the WHO website (who.int) was also ranked highly. Among search strings that resulted in people visiting the site were “applied clinical informatics, “tiger initiative”, and (again – interestingly, for an event that does not exist) “mie 2013”.

Most visitors came from the USA (by far the largest number), with Canada second, and Japan now third, above the UK close behind, and followed by Australia, and India. In Europe, most visitors were from the UK, Germany, Spain and Sweden; in the Asia-Pacific area from Japan, Australia, India, Singapore; in Africa from South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya; in Latin America from Brazil, Argentina and Mexico; and in the Middle East region, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

The full summary as provided by WordPress.com is also available, at https://imianews.wordpress.com/2012/annual-report/

Thank you to all our members and readers – but we need your input to improve. Please send news items, interact, promote the site.

Happy 100th Birthday, Dr Morris F Collen

IMIA colleagues around the world wish Dr Morris F Collen a happy 100th birthday today, the 12 November, 2013 (or 11/12/13 in the US date format).

In an editorial in Methods, Don Lindberg and Marion Ball write about his life, contributions, and influence: Morris F. Collen at 100: A Tribute to “The Father of Medical Informatics”, available as a free download in Methods of Information in Medicine. Dr Collen is an IMIA Honorary Fellow (in addition to his many other recognitions and awards).

Other news items celebrating Dr Collen’s birthday and reflecting on his contributions within the US and globally are at:

http://researchnews.kaiser.org/?p=2202

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Kaiser-doctor-sticks-to-schedule-as-he-turns-100-4975689.php

http://kaiserpermanentehistory.org/latest/celebrating-morris-collen-mds-100th-birthday/

http://www.slideshare.net/atulbutte/atul-butte-presentation-at-the-morris-collen-100-birthday-celebration

http://kaiserpermanentehistory.org/latest/fire-up-your-feat-dr-morris-collen-turns-100/

Ted Shortliffe, Charles Safran others have posted some photos on Facebook.

The Pioneer of Health Informatics in Saudi Arabia Moves On

Our colleague, Dr. Mowafa Househ, assistant professor at the college of Public Health and Health Informatics, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, writes:

Prof. Dr. Majid Altuwaijri, founder and Dean of the College of Public Health and Health Informatics, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, CIO for the National Guard Health Affairs, retired from public service last month. For the past twenty years, Professor Altuwaijri has strived to cement and lead health informatics initiatives within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 2005, Professor Altuwaijri established the first college of Public Health and Health Informatics in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. In 2006, Professor Altuwaijri also established the Saudi Arabian Health Informatics Assocation (SAHI) and served as president from 2006 till 2012. One of Professor Altuwaijri’s principal accomplishments, and perhaps his most lasting legacy, was the establishment of the King Abdullah Arabic Health Encyclopedia (KAAHE – http://www.kaahe.org/en/). The website was officially launched in 2012 and almost one and a half years after its launch it has become the most visited Arabic health website in the Middle East with over one million visitors a month.

For his efforts over the years in building health informatics within Saudi Arabia, Professor Altuwaijri was granted the King Abdulaziz Medal of Honor in the first degree, the highest honor bestowed on a civilian in Saudi Arabia.

A full appreciation of Professor Altuwaijri’s contribution to the development of health informatics in Saudi Arabia is provided by Dr. Mowafa Househ and colleagues, and is downloadable here.

Call to Review Kigali Health Institute Masters in Health Informatics Curriculum

The Kigali Health Institute (KHI), Rwanda, runs the Master of Science in Health Informatics (MSc HI) degree programme under the auspices of the Regional e-Health Centre of Excellence which is based in KHI. The MSc HI programme started in 2011 as an evening programme whereby students attend training sessions after work.

KHI (http://www.khi.ac.rw) has produced a Call for applications to review the MSc in Health Informatics curriculum. The full call is attached here or directly from the KHI website at http://www.khi.ac.rw/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=152&Itemid=62

The review work is scheduled for completion in October 2013, and interested applicants should contact the following by 16 September:

The Director of Postgraduate Studies, K.H.I (Central Secretariat):
Attention Prof Kato J NJUNWA or by email: njunwa@khi.ac.rw
P.O. BOX 3286, KIGALI RWANDA. Tel.:+250 7884 90522

Please direct all queries to KHI, and not to IMIA.

IMIA GA Meeting 2013

[Photo courtesy Antoine Geissbuhler]

The IMIA General Assembly meeting 2013 was held at the Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark on 20 August, 2013 in conjunction with Medinfo2013. Around 70 GA members were able to be present in person, including Board members, Member Society representatives, Honorary Fellows, Working Groups chairs and others. Thank you to all who participated.

As a result of decisions made at the GA, and general policy directions, there will be some major changes for IMIA in the next 12-18 months, including:

• the GA approved a move to the IMIA Yearbook being open access and online-only. We need to finalise contractual issues and expect the new model from 2014;
• the Nominating Committee will formalise an even wider consultation process than exists for proposals for IMIA Board members and membership of some key committees. We will be discussing the practical issues with members in the coming months.

Two new Member Societies were admitted to IMIA:

• Colombian Association of Health Informatics (Asociación Colombiana de Informática en Salud – ACIESA)
• Kenya Health Informatics Association (KeHIA)

In addition, the Centre for Health Informatics, City University, London, UK was reinstated as an Academic Institutional Member.

Prof. Fernando Martin-Sanchez and Prof. Kaija Saranto were approved as  SPC co-chairs for Medinfo2015. They have already started work on the processes and timelines for Medinfo2015, and will be consulting widely as they seek ideas and the additional SPC members.

GA2014 Meeting: New Delhi, India – 31 October, 2014 – in conjunction with the APAMI2014 Conference (01-02 November)
Watch http://www.apami2014.com for more information on the conference call for submissions.

The IMIA Board will also meet in Budapest, Hungary on 26 April, 2014 in conjunction with the EFMI STC2014 meeting.

Head of Scientific Computing Solutions sought by AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca are looking to fill a new, key role. Here, you’ll identify leading scientific computing techniques and collaborations and make sure they take firm root within the organisation and achieve maximum benefit for the business.

You’ll help raise AstraZeneca’s profile in this area, present at conferences, participate in events and workshops and show the team the way forward.

More information and applications details can be found on their website http://www.jobs.astrazeneca.com/jobs/details/l1rRD518-head-scientific-computing-solutions