AMIA Weekly News

AMIA co-convenes meeting that succeeds in forging common U.S.-EU approach 
May 16—The final meeting in a series held by the ARGOS eHealth Consortium, a project funded by the European Commission (EC) to develop and promote common methods for responding to global eHealth challenges, recently concluded in Budapest amidst greater mutual understanding and stronger agreement among a broad set of leaders in Europe and the U.S., all of whom are responsible for expanding the use of health information technology (HIT). Research in informatics in biomedicine and health demonstrates that effective use of HIT supports improved health outcomes; the ARGOS participants believe that expanded and coordinated use of HIT will have a deep impact on the health and well-being of a broad swath of populations here and in Europe.

Click to read this release.

The Nominating Committee of AMIA is currently soliciting nominations for Board Secretary, Treasurer and four Directors. Please let AMIA staff liaison Kristin Schelin know who among your colleagues is ready and willing to serve the profession at the Association leadership level.

All regular AMIA members in good standing are eligible for election to the Board. AMIA is looking for individuals with a commitment to AMIA and its initiatives, demonstrated leadership skills, and a willingness to volunteer the time and effort to serve the Association, its members, and the profession.

Members are encouraged to self-nominate or advance names of eligible candidates for these positions by June 7 to the AMIA office via email to kristin@amia.org. All information submitted will be handled confidentially.

Nominators should supply a paragraph about their nominee’s background and why the nominator feels the person is qualified and would be a good addition to the AMIA Board.

Included with the nomination should be:

• The nominees’ name and email address
• Position for which that the person is being nominated (secretary, treasurer or director)
• Length of AMIA membership
• Involvement history with association committees or working groups
• Other activities with AMIA

The Nominating Committee will present the final slate to the AMIA Board in August and to the membership as a whole in September. After the slate of nominees is announced, candidate biographical information and instructions on voting will be posted on the AMIA website. All candidates will be required to complete a conflict of interest form that follows AMIA’s Conflict of Interest Policy. The online election process will occur early in the fall.

For additional information, click here.

AMIA has weighed in on the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan in response to the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC) call for comments on the overarching strategy for realizing health IT goals set forth by the U.S. Congress and the Administration. AMIA states in its comments to ONC that several elements of the Strategic Plan are laudable, including the creation of standards, certification of systems, and the incorporation of these issues into medical education. However, AMIA also expressed some concerns. To read AMIA's full comments, click here.

The chair of AMIA’s Consumer Health Informatics Working Group, Lindsey B. Hoggle, MS, Managing Partner at Health Project Partners, LLC, was invited to write a guest post for Informatics for Consumer Health blog that appears on the National Cancer Institute website at NIH. Informatics for Consumer Health focuses on the coordination of health information, technology, and health care delivery that empowers providers to manage care and increases the ability of consumers to gain mastery over their own health. This initiative is led by a collaboration of Federal agencies, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Library of Medicine (NLM), and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Lindsey discusses consumer health informatics as the mirror image of public health informatics and how these two areas work “in concert” with one another. This conversation will continue at PHI 2011 in Orlando, Fla. on May 25-27.

PHI 2011 is approaching fast. Advance deadline for this meeting is TODAY, May 12. Online registration will close on Friday, May 13, but onsite registration will be available on a walk-in basis. For more information, click here.

Visit NCI/NIH blog and join the discussion!

There is still space available for the OHSU 10x10 course that began on April 27. This course aims to provide a detailed overview of biomedical and health informatics to those who will work at the interface of healthcare and information technology (IT). It provides a broad understanding of the field from the vantage point of those who implement, lead, and develop IT solutions for improving health, healthcare, public health, and biomedical research.

AMIA is pleased to add to its schedule of courses, University of Minnesota School of Nursing’s tenth 10x10 course. Course begins July 11, registration is now open.

Also available for registration with only a few weeks left:

• 10x10 with Nova Southeastern University—registration deadline May 10, course begins May 16
• 10x10 with University of Illinois Chicago—registration deadline May 6, course begins May 27
• 10x10 with Stanford University—course begins June 21
• 10x10 with OHSU in conjunction with the American College of Emergency Physicians—registration deadline and course begins, June 29

Please visit www.amia.org/e-learning to register for any of these courses and to view full course descriptions.

Members can directly access full content of JAMIA online by logging onto the JAMIA website. The goal is to make your access to JAMIA content as seamless as possible, so that when you access JAMIA articles through third party websites such as PubMed, you will not need to go back to AMIA.org to log in. Access to JAMIA will also be available through the “My Information” page of MyAMIA.org. This change simply offers an additional way for members to access JAMIA content easier.

To log in to your profile, visit the JAMIA website. In the upper right-hand corner, enter the following information:

User name: your email address (the one at which you received this email)
Password: currently set to password (you can change this later)

If you have any questions about this change, please contact mail@amia.org.

Scientific Technologies Corporation (STC) will host an educational Lunch-and-Learn presentation at PHI 2011. Please plan on joining STC subject-matter experts on Wed., May 25 to learn more about their ground-breaking surveillance programs. To view the PHI 2011 schedule, click here.

About STC: Headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., STC is a leading company in public health informatics and IT solutions supporting local, state, national and global public health practice, with emphasis on immunization registry and information exchange, disease surveillance and management systems, health information technology (HIT), and Medicaid management. STC has provided public health and technical services for 35 state health departments and multiple major U.S. cities.

AMIA’s upcoming conference on public health informatics, PHI 2011, May 25-27, in Orlando, is a consensus meeting of public health professionals who will help set the next informatics agenda in public health. A series of breakout sessions to be held during the conference, will each be dedicated to one of five subject tracks; each will culminate with summary recommendations on May 27. Following the meeting, the entire set of recommendations will be compiled into a white paper to be published in JAMIA later this year. To see the complete PHI 2011 two-and-a-half-day agenda, click here.

On Wednesday, May 4, at 2 p.m. ET, the five PHI 2011 track chairs will join Scientific Program Committee Chair Barbara Massoudi to preview the issues and topics that will be examined in the breakout sessions of the upcoming meeting. Join them in a free phone-in teleconference that will provide short overviews on each track and plenty of time for questions and answers with the track leaders: Ethics led by Ken Goodman, PhD, Miami University; Technical Frameworks led by Lisa Lang, MPP, National Library of Medicine; Research and Evaluation led by Anne Turner, MD, MPH, University of Washington; Sustainability led by David Potenziani, PhD, University of North Carolina; and Professional Training and Workforce Development led by Janise Richards, PhD, MPH, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Call in at 877-864-2828; passcode 686612.

JAMIA Editor-in-chief Lucila Ohno-Machado will be onsite at PHI 2011, observing the development of the white paper. “The recommendations from PHI 2011 will form an important directive for public health,” says Ohno-Machado. “JAMIA is fortunate to be in the right place at the right time—able to publish the PHI 2011 recommendations and to draw wide attention to them from a variety of communities.”

A limited number of stipends are still available for full-time public health professionals who meet certain criteria and with to attend this highly relevant and critical meeting. For more information, click here.

Last week, several dozen AMIA members traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with a few Members of Congress and more than 30 legislative aides to discuss the roles of health information technology and informatics in quality healthcare delivery and how to accelerate their broad adoption in the healthcare sector. The group was greeted by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who supports expansion of biomedical and health informatics. To view photos from Capitol Hill day, click here.

Later in the day, Senator Whitehouse attended a second informatics event, sponsored by PHI 2011 sponsor, RTI International, at the National Press Club. The senator opened the program, called “Patients as Partners in Care: Engaging Patients through Health IT.” Many AMIA members attended the event, which featured speakers from ONC, HealthCentral.com, RTI International and Bon Secours Health System, and which highlighted the critical role of consumer health informatics in health care, and illuminated examples of how CHI is implemented well or poorly.

If you live in or visit the DC area, see the remaining sessions in RTI’s “Emerging Issues in Science and Society” series, at http://www.rti.org/policyforums. Each program is held at the National Press Club.

With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AMIA is offering financial aid to PHI attendees who are full-time public health professionals and require assistance in order to attend the upcoming conference, which is expected to deliver a consensus on the next informatics agenda for public health. If you work full-time in the field of public health and would like to attend the conference but need financial support in order to do so, go online and use the nomination form to submit a request for a sponsored grant for yourself. You may also nominate someone else who meets the eligibility criteria. AMIA will distribute 50 stipends of $1,000 each to attendees who meet the grant criteria and who register for the meeting. Grants will be awarded to the first 50 applicants who are eligible, as defined on the website.

A day before PHI 2011 opens, on May 24, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and AMIA are teaming up to offer pre-conference Basic Training on the implications of meaningful use (MU) for the public health professional. The all-day training program will cover the following topics:

• The regulatory and temporal timeframe of meaningful use
• Standardization required for meaningful use implementation
• CDC’s Public Health Information Network (PHIN), including its resources
• Meaningful use adoption by public health and how it will be monitored

Still not sure if PHI 2011 is for you? Browse the program by using the new and improved Itinerary Planner. Click here to access this planning tool.

PHI 2011 is scheduled to take place May 25-27, 2011, in Orlando, Florida. Click here for more information. To follow PHI 2011 activity on Twitter, use #PHI2011 @AMIAInformatix.