Welcome to IMIA
General
The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) is the world body for health
and biomedical informatics. As an ‘association of associations', IMIA acts as a bridging
organization to bring together its constituent organizations and their mem- bers.
IMIA provides leadership and exper- tise to the multidisciplinary, health focused
community and to policy makers, to enable the transformation of healthcare in accord
with the worldwide vision of improving the health of the world population. Inherent
in IMIA's role is to bring together, from a global perspective, scientists, researchers,
users, vendors, developers, consultants and suppliers in an environment of cooperation
and sharing.
IMIA was established as an independent, not for profit organization under Swiss law
in 1989. IMIA was originally founded in 1967 as Technical Committee 4 of the International
Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). Since 1979, IMIA has evolved from a
Special Interest Group of IFIP to its current status as a fully independent international
organization. It continues to maintain its relationship with IFIP as an affiliate
organization and has an appointed Liaison Officer. IMIA also has close and collaborative
ties with the World Health Organization (WHO) as a NGO (Non Government Organization)
in official rela-ions, with appointed Liaison Officers from both the WHO and IMIA.
IMIA is also a Liaison A category organization in cooperation with the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The working language of IMIA is English.
Vision
The IMIA vision is that there will be a worldwide systems approach for healthcare.
Clinicians, researchers, patients and people in general will be supported by informatics
tools, processes and behaviours that make it easy to do the right thing, in the right
way, at the right time to improve health care for all. This systems approach will
incorporate and integrate research, clinical care and public health. To achieve this
vision, it will require everyone being supported by infor- matics-based information
and communica- tion systems and technologies. This vision is described in the IMIA
Strategic Plan.
IMIA will fulfil its vision by:
-
Being the scientific informatics associa- tion through which the world's knowledge
leaders come together to effectively and efficiently create, assemble, integrate,
synthesize or assimilate intellectual knowledge that is required worldwide to advance
biomedical informatics in its role of improving health and healthcare.
-
Being the informatics association that effectively and efficiently connects peo- ple
and the nations of the world to be able to accomplish the above purpose.
Membership
IMIA membership consists of Member Societies, Institutional and Affiliate Members,
Honorary Fellows and Corresponding Members.
Member Societies are generally societies with individual membership, or similar appropriate
bodies, which represent the biomedical and health informatics activities within their
nation or region. IMIA accom- modates involvement by individuals through “Corresponding”
membership, for developing countries as a means of providing encouragement and support
to form a representative Member Society.
IMIA Member Societies may organize into regional groups. Current IMIA regions are
APAMI, IMIA-LAC, EFMI, HELINA, North America (Canada and the U.S.A.) and MENAHIA.
Regions are represented at the IMIA General Assembly and Board by Vice Presidents
appointed by their respective re- gional organizations.
Institutional Members include academic institutions, corporations, and other bodies.
Corporate members can include vendors, consulting, and technology firms, publishers
and other professional organiza- tions. Academic members include univer- sities, medical
centres, research centres and other similar institutions.
Affiliate Members consist of international organizations that share an interest in the broad field
of health and biomedical informatics.
Honorary Fellows are individuals who have demonstrated exceptional meritorious service in furthering
the aims and interests of IMIA; fellowship is conferred for life.
Working and Special Interest Groups provide opportunities for collaboration among individuals who share common in- terests
in a particular focal field. IMIA currently has two Special Interest Groups (Nursing
Informatics and the Francophone SIG). Many of IMIA's 25 active Working and Special
Interest Groups hold working con- ferences on leading edge and timely health, medical
and biomedical informatics issues.
Governance
IMIA is governed by a General Assembly, which meets annually. It consists of one representative
from each IMIA Member Society and Institutional Member, Honorary Fellows, chairs of
IMIA's Working Groups and SIGs, and representatives from Affiliate Members (the WHO,
IFIP, IFHIMA), and each of IMIA's Regions. Only IMIA Member Societies have full voting
rights.
The Board of IMIA, elected by the Gen- eral Assembly, conducts the association's affairs.
The day-to-day operations are sup- ported by IMIA Office and CEO. The officers of
the Board and IMIA's Vice Presidents vigorously pursue IMIA's mission to:
-
Capitalize on the synergies and collective resources of IMIA's constituents.
-
Minimize fragmentation between scientific and professional medical informaticians.
-
Ensure successful adaptation to changes in the medical informatics marketplace and
discipline.
-
Raise the profile and awareness of IMIA within and outside of the IMIA organization.
-
Encourage cooperation between the sci- entific and commercial health informatics communities.
-
Equitably balance support to emerging and existing IMIA members.
-
Establish and maintain cooperation and harmony with organizations that emerge to address
medical informatics issues.
-
Continue to position IMIA as the facili- tator of medical informatics issues in the
international community.
MedInfo and NI Congress
IMIA organizes the internationally ac- claimed “World Congress on Medical and Health
Informatics”, MedInfo. MedInfo 2021 was held as a virtual event due to restrictions
caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and was hosted exclusively by IMIA.
Previous MedInfo events have been held in Stockholm, Sweden (1974), Toronto, Canada,
(1977), Tokyo, Japan (1980), Am- sterdam, The Netherlands (1983), Washing- ton, USA
(1986), Beijing/ Singapore (1989), Geneva, Switzerland (1992), Vancouver, Canada (1995),
Seoul, Korea (1998), Lon- don, UK (2001), San Francisco, USA (2004), Brisbane, Australia
(2007), Cape Town, South Africa (2010), Copenhagen, Denmark (2013), Sao Paulo, Brazil
(2015), Hangzhou, China (2017), and Lyon, France (2019).
MedInfo 2023 will be held in Sydney, Australia and hosted by the Australasian Institute
of Digital Health (AIDH) from July 7-12, 2023 and MedInfo 2025 will be held in Taiwan.
The NI (nursing informatics) Congress has been held since 1982, under the aus- pices
of the IMIA Special Interest Group in Nursing Informatics (IMIA NI SIG). The first
NI Congress was held in London, UK, followed by Calgary, Canada (1985), Dublin, Ireland
(1988), Melbourne, Australia (1991), San Antonio, Texas, USA (1994), Stock- holm,
Sweden (1997), Auckland, New Zealand (2000), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2003), Seoul,
Korea (2006), Helsinki, Finland (2009), Montreal, Canada (2012), Taipei, Taiwan (2014),
Geneva, Switzerland (2016) and Guadalajara, Mexico (2018). NI2020, unfortunately had
to be post-poned due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and NI2020 was hosted by Australasian
Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) virtually.
IMIA Code of Ethics
IMIA adopted the “IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information Professionals” in 2002.
The code has been translated into several languages, and is freely available to the
public at IMIA's website. The updated 2016 IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information
Professionals were approved by IMIA's General Assembly on August 28th, 2016 in Munich,
Germany. IMIA acknowledges great appreciation of the revision of the “code” to Dr.
Eike-Henner W. Kluge, Professor of the Department of Philosophy at the University
of Victoria in Victoria, BC, Canada, for his time and dedication in providing IMIA
with this valued document. The updated version and accompanying handbook are available
on the IMIA website at http://imia-medinfo.org/imia-code-of-ethics/.
Official Journals
Four scientific publications have been ac- corded the status of “an Official Journal
of the International Medical Informatics Asso- ciation: Methods of Information in
Medicine (George Thieme Publishers Stuttgart); Ap- plied Clinical Informatics (Georg
Thieme Publishers Stuttgart); International Journal of Medical Informatics (Elsevier);
and In- formatics for Health and Social Care.
