From the IMIA General Assembly 2014

The IMIA General Assembly 2014 meeting was held in New Delhi, India on 31 October, in conjunction with the APAMI2014 conference. A report will be sent to all IMIA GA members and official representatives. However, some news items that may be of wider interest include:

IMIA Board Member appointments – Dr Petter Hurlen (Norway) will become IMIA Secretary (2015-18), succeeding Dr Lyn Hanmer (South Africa). Prof. Sabine Koch (Sweden) is appointed for a second term (2015-18) as IMIA Treasurer, Prof. Christoph Lehmann (USA) for a second term (2015-18) as IMIA VP Services, and Prof. Michio Kimura (Japan) for a second term (2015-18) as IMIA VP Membership. Prof. Michio Kimura will also replace Dr Lincoln de Assis Moura Jr as IMIA Liaison Office to ISO.

The IMIA Award of Excellence has been renamed as the IMIA François Grémy Award of Excellence, following a proposal from the French Medical Informatics Association (AIM – Association Française d’Informatique Médicale), our IMIA Member Society in France, and others. The Call for Applications/Nominations for the 2015 Award will be launched in January 2015.

The IMIA WG Year of the Award 2013 was presented at the IMIA General Assembly meeting in New Delhi on 31 October. The high quality of the reports and activity of some WG/SIGs means that the committee (chaired by IMIA VP WG/SIGs Prof. Tze Yun Leong) had a lot of work to do to try and judge between the groups. From a shortlist, as the results were so very close, it was not possible to separate the top three, and so the 2013 Award is made jointly to:

• Special Interest Group on Nursing Informatics;
• Social Media Working Group;
• Working Group on Technology Assessment and Quality Development.

 

GMDS-IMIA HIS WG Workshop on “Research Databases” (Göttingen, Germany – 11 September 2014)

A satellite workshop on the topic of Research Databases will be held following the annual meeting of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) on Thursday, 11 September 2014. The workshop is organised by the GMDS “EHR data reuse for clinical research” working group in cooperation with the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Health Information Systems working group and the “Infrastructure for Translational Research” working group of the Department of Medical Informatics at the Göttingen University Medical Center. The workshop will also include the 2nd European i2b2 Academic User Group Meeting in conjunction with a workshop of the i2b2 enhancing IDRT project sponsored by the TMF.

All interested researchers are invited to to participate in this international workshop, directly following the annual German Medical Informatics Conference held at the Göttingen University from September 8-10, 2014. Please send a registration mail by 31 August to Prof. Dr. H.U. Prokosch – ulli.prokosch[at]uk-erlangen.de – if you want to attend this free workshop.

The program will include presentations on projects using i2b2 or tranSMART and SHRINE as foundations for research projects (such as EHR4CR, Cloud4Health, IDRT), as well as presentations on projects employing other research database software, to support collaborative hospital-wide and even trans-institutional research projects.

Further information (in English and German) is at http://www.pg-ss.imi.uni-erlangen.de/Seiten/Default.aspx  Information on the main GMDS2014 conference is at http://www.gmds.de/tagungen/2014/

The workshop programme (English version) is available as a PDF download (1.1Mb) – also available online (English)

Die nächste Sitzung der AG findet unmittelbar im Anschluss an die GMDS Jahrestagung 2014 in Göttingen (Donnerstag, 11. September 2014) als Satelliten-Workshop zum Thema “Forschungsdatenbanken” statt. Der zweite europäische i2b2 Academic User Group Workshop ist in dieses Veranstaltung integriert.

GMDS-IMIA HIS WG Workshop (Göttingen, Germany) – Call Extended to 30 June

Our collegaue Prof. Stéphane Meystre, chair of the IMIA Working Group on Health Information Systems, draws your attention to the extended deadline of the Call for Papers for this workshop, to be held in Göttingen, Germany on 11 September 2014, in conjunction with the annual GMDS conference:

The GMDS Workshop “Research Databases“ (German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) “EHR data reuse for clinical research” work group) combined with the 2nd European i2b2 AUG meeting and a workshop of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Health Information Systems workgroup.

We already have an excellent group of international keynote speakers coming from Boston, New York, Paris and Pavia:

• Shawn Murphy (Boston) i2b2 Roadmap
• George Hripcsak (New York) The Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) Project and Aspects of EHR Data Quality
• Paul Avillach (Paris) Integrating Exome sequencing & Clinical notes in tranSMART/i2b2
• Riccardo Bellazzi (Pavia) Intersections between exposomics and i2b2

We already have a set of very interesting abstracts. However, some colleagues who were planning to send an abstract have asked for a short extension. Thus we have decided to keep the call for papers open until the end of June. See the attached flyer.
Abstracts are welcome until June 30th 2014 – e-mail to ulli.prokosch[at]uk-erlangen.de

GMDS-IMIA HIS WG Workshop (Göttingen, Germany) – Call for Papers Closes 15 June

Our collegaue Prof. Stéphane Meystre, chair of the IMIA Working Group on Health Information Systems, announces the Call for Papers for a workshop to be held in Göttingen, Germany on 11 September 2014, in conjunction with the annual GMDS conference.

A satellite workshop on the topic of Research Databases will be held following the annual meeting of the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) on Thursday, 11 September 2014. The workshop is organised by the GMDS “EHR data reuse for clinical research” working group in cooperation with the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Health Information Systems Working Group and the “Infrastructure for Translational Research” working group of the Department of Medical Informatics at the Göttingen University Medical Center. The workshop will also include the 2nd European i2b2 Academic User Group Meeting.

The Announcement and Call for Papers document is downloadable [PDF, 200kb] and has full information. Deadline for submissions is 15 June, 2014.

Research groups working in the aforementioned areas and interested in presenting their work at this workshop are invited to submit a one page abstract by June 15th by e-mail to ulli.prokosch[at]uk-erlangen.de. The organization team will select the most interesting manuscripts for presentation from submitted national and international abstract submissions. We invite all interested researchers to participate in this international workshop, directly following the annual German Medical Informatics Conference held at the Göttingen University from September 8th to 10th 2014. Registration for this workshop is free and should be made by e-mail to ulli.prokosch[at]uk-erlangen.de.

CSHI2013 Conference – Presentations Available

Prof. Christian Nohr and colleagues from Aalborg University in Denmark are pleased to announce that slides from the presentations of the pre-Medinfo2013 conference Context Sensitive Health Informatics, Human & Sociotechnical approaches are now available at the conference web site: http://cshi2013.org  – click on the programme link, and you will find the presentations that are available (where permission for use has been given). Presentations available  include those of keynote speakers Enrico Coiera and Elizabeth Borycki,

There is also a new item on the menu bar: pictures where you can see photos of all the presenters and participants (and Ross’ birthday cake 😉 )

It is unclear exactly what is happening here (perhaps Paul and Enrico are auditioning for the Wallabies), but the presenters concerned can doubtless explain 😉 …

The IMIA working groups behind the conference had business meetings during Medinfo and decided to aim at a new CSHI conference prior to Medinfo 2015 in Brazil. More information about call for papers, deadlines etc. will follow.

Medinfo2013 Highlights No. 5 – IMIA Standards in Health Care Informatics WG and Related Activity

The IMIA Standards in Health Care Informatics  Working Group will be holding a business meeting at Medinfo2013. The meeting will be on Friday, 23 August from 08:00-09:30am in Meeting Room 19, the Bella center, Copenhagen. Further information on the meeting, agenda, etc. can be obtained from the WG chair and vice chair – see http://www.imia-medinfo.org/new2/node/153

In addition, other activities relating to standards, directly and indirectly will take place at Medinfo2013, including:

• Workshop for IMIA Standardization WG, Thursday 22 August, 13:45 – 15:15 in Session Room 5, organized  by Prof. Jun Nakaya;
• Workshop on Standards in Clinical Decision Support: Activities in Health Level Seven and Beyond, Thursday 22 August, 15:45 – 17:15 in Session Room 5 – Robert Jenders, Guilherme Del Fiol.

Also of relevance, due to the 2013 WHA resolution on ehealth and interoperability, is the WHO Panel, A global perspective to strengthening health systems and accelerating universal health coverage through eHealth (Wednesday 21 August, 08:30 – 10:00).

Medinfo2013 Highlights No. 3 – IMIA Social Media Working Group Meeting and Activity

The IMIA Social Media Working Group (SMWG) will be holding a business meeting at Medinfo2013. The meeting will be on Wednesday, 21 August from 08:00-09:30am in Meeting Room 17, the Bella center, Copenhagen. Further information on the meeting, agenda, etc. is at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/7667111537 – those intending to participate are asked to register through this site. Further information will also be available through the IMIA SMWG website at http://imiasocialmedia.wordpress.com

The IMIA SMWG will be presenting a panel titled “New Trends in Health Social Media: Hype or Evidence-based medicine?” – “The use of social media in the health domain is growing continuously in the terms of use and also complexity. This panel will provide and overview of the current situation and the challenges ahead. The presenters will provide an engaging discussion rooted in the evidence of the emerging field of Health Social Media. Among other topics the following aspects will be addressed: gamification, personalized medicine, patient safety and other topics that will be discussed in the panel.” Presenters include Luis Fernandez-Luque (Norut, Tromsø, Norway), Kerstin Denecke (University Medical Center of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany) and Fernando José Martín-Sanchez (Health and Biomedical Informatics Research Unit, The University of Melbourne, Australia). See more information at http://imiasocialmedia.wordpress.com

There will also be other relevant presentations throughout Medinfo2013, which will be itemised in the final programme.

Medinfo2013 Highlights No. 2 – IMIA Health Informatics for Development Working Group Meeting

Many IMIA Working Groups will have business meetings at Medinfo2013 in Copenhagen. A summary of these and other meetings (some of which may be open, some may be by invitation only) is at http://www.medinfo2013.dk/node/94

The IMIA Health Informatics for Development Working Group will be holding a meeting on Friday 23 August, from 08:00-09:30am in Meeting Room 17, Bella Center (Medinfo2013 venue). The meeting will be chaired by Dr Daniel Luna (Chief Medical Information Officer; Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires; Argentina), WG Chair and Dr. Alvin Marcelo (Senior vice-president and Chief Information Officer; Philippine Health Insurance Corporation), WG vice chair. A programme for the meeting is available here: IMIA HIDevWG Schedule.

If you have any questions about the WG or the meeting, or to RSVP that will attend, please contact Dr Daniel Luna (Daniel.luna[at]hospitalitaliano.org.ar).

We will post information on other WG meetings as we are notified and requested (subject to resources).

Medinfo2013 Highlights No. 1 – free/libre open source activities

This is the first of a series of news items over the next 4 weeks, in which we will highlight Medinfo2013 activities. If you would like your event, activity, etc. to be featured, please send email to imia[at]imia-services.org (selection of items to be featured will be entirely at editorial discretion).

Thomas Karopka <tkaropka[at]gmail.com> IMIA OS WG chair and EFMI LIFOSS WG chair writes about two free/libre and open source activities to be held.

The “Care for the World” mini-symposium with the title “Collaboration, Openness, transparency and trust as prerequisite for high quality, effective and efficient health care” will present and discuss different approaches to tackle the global challenges in health care. The main argument is that collaboration, openness, transparency and trust are the most powerful ingredients to develop high quality, sustainable solutions and maximize the impact that these tools might have in improving health outcomes. Two different but related approaches will be presented: The use of Free/Libre Open Source Software and Open User Driven Innovation. This mini-symposium is collaboratively organized by IMIA OS WG, EFMI LIFOSS WG, GNUSolidario, International Institute for Global Health of the United NationsUniversity (UNU-IIGH), MedFLOSS.org and the EU project ScanBalt HealthPort. Thursday, 22 August, 08:30 – 10:00.

There will be a joint working group meeting of IMIA OS WG and EFMI LIFOSS WG,  on Wednesday 21st August, from 2pm-3.30pm. This is an open working group meeting and all people interested in free/libre open source software in health informatics are very welcome to attend this meeting. Suggested Agenda will include Short report about activities of the last year; Collaboration with other FLOSS working groups (inside and outside of IMIA); and Future work of IMIA OS WG and EFMI LIFOSS WG.

Context Sensitive Health Informatics: a pre-Medinfo 2013 conference

The “Context Sensitive Health Informatics” event, a pre-Medinfo conference, will be held on 17-18 August, 2013. The event is  jointly organized/supported by several IMIA WG (Human Factors Engineering for Healthcare Informatics, Organizational and Social Issues, Health Informatics for Patient Safety).

Registration is open; see http://www.cshi2013.org/registration For more information about the conference and registration please see the conference web site: http://www.cshi2013.org  or http://www.medinfo2013.dk/node/67

The conference is endorsed by IMIA, EFMI and AMIA and organized/supported by the IMIA Working Groups Human Factors Engineering for Healthcare Informatics, Organizational and Social Issues, Health Informatics for Patient Safety and by the EFMI WG on Human and Organizational Factors of Medical Informatics.

Keynote speakers include Enrico Coiera, Australian Institute for Health Innovation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (title: Stasis and adaptation – the paradox of health systems that resist large-scale change but can embrace local variation) and Elizabeth M. Borycki, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, BC, Canada (title: Technology-Induced Errors: Where Do They Come From and What Can We Do About Them?)

The event will be held on 17 and 18 August, 2013 at the Danish Institute for Medical Simulation at Herlev Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark (NOTE: not at the Bella Center).

This is an official event of several IMIA WGs and is supported by IMIA, AMIA, EFMI and other organisations.