American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)

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The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) is a professional scientific association of biomedical and health informatics professionals, also known as informaticians. AMIA is the official United States representative to the International Medical Informatics Association.

History

AMIA was formed by the merger of three organizations in 1988:

  • American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics (AAMSI)
  • American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI)
  • Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC)

For more than 37 years, AMIA and its members have sponsored meetings, education, policy, and research programs. The American College of Medical Informatics dissolved its separate corporate status when it merged to form AMIA and now exists as a self-sufficient elected body of fellows within the greater AMIA organization.

Mission

AMIA's mission is to:

"Lead the way in transforming health care through trusted science, education, and the practice of informatics."[1]

The core functions of the society are to advance the science of informatics, promote the education of informatics, assure that health information technology is used most effectively to promote health and health care, advance the profession of informatics, and provide services to members such as networking and professional development. AMIA actively supports five different informatics domains:

  • Translational Bioinformatics
  • Clinical Research Informatics
  • Clinical Informatics
  • Consumer Health Informatics
  • Public Health Informatics

Membership

AMIA membership is composed of a diverse body of informaticians from a wide variety of backgrounds including: physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, clinicians, health information technology professionals, computer and information scientists, biomedical engineers, consultants and industry representatives, medical librarians, academic researchers and educators, and advanced students pursuing a career in clinical informatics or health information technology. Currently, the association has over 5,000 members.

AMIA 10 x 10

Former AMIA Chairman Dr. Charles Safran, recognizing the future need for informatics professionals, stated that one physician and one nurse from each of America's 6,000 hospitals needs to be trained in informatics. The 10x10 course was developed to meet the goal of training 10,000 health care professionals in applied health and medical informatics within 10 years (by 2010). The 10x10 course has been taught around the world using in-person and online/distance learning. Oregon Health and Science University has the largest and most successful 10x10 course, with 999 trainees completing the program by 2010 and over 1800 by the end of 2014. The 10x10 course has been translated into Spanish and delivered to >850 trainees in Latin America.

Meetings

AMIA holds an annual scientific meeting which includes a symposium of the latest biomedical and health informatics research. The annual meeting also provides a forum for networking and professional development. In addition, AMIA hosts the Informatics Summit, Clinical Informatics Conference, and the Informatics Educators Forum.

Publications

AMIA publishes a monthly peer-reviewed periodical for biomedical and health informatics titled the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA)[2] JAMIA covers the full spectrum of activities in the field, including articles related to clinical care, clinical research, translational science, implementation science, imaging, education, consumer health, public health, and policy. JAMIA's articles describe innovative informatics research and systems that help to advance biomedical science and to promote health.

2014 Impact Factor: 3.504

References

1. American Medical Informatics Association Homepage. http://www.amia.org

2. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. http://jamia.oxfordjournals.org

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Informatics_Association

Submitted by James Morrison, MD