AMIA Liaison Report

American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)

The AMIA 2009 Annual Symposium was held November 8 – 12, 2008 in Washington, DC, on Biomedical and Health Informatics: From Foundations to Applications to Policy. The symposium offered papers, posters, and invited panels, as well as tutorials and continuing education. Birds of a feather sessions, a new feature this year, provided informal sessions where people with common interests could discuss specific topics that had been solicited from prospective conference attendees.

AMIA received about 900 submissions for paper, posters, and panels. After review committees accepted proposals, a committee categorized the submissions as foundational contributions of novel informatics methods or practical reports of the applications of informatics and then sorted the submissions into themes; the 2008 meeting included 11 themes. The AMIA conference includes a mix of broad, over-arching topics, as well as specific research results. Many presenters were students in informatics graduate programs, so there seemed to be more research papers than at typical MLA meetings. Further information about the symposium can be obtained on the AMIA web site .

Other AMIA meetings include AMIA Summit on Translational Bioinformatics , which will be held March 15-17, 2009, in San Francisco, California; and the 2009 AMIA Spring Congress , which will be held May 28 – 30, 2009, Orlando, Florida.

AMIA continues to work towards its objective of training 10,000 healthcare professionals by the year 2010 through its 10x10 program. Karen Albert, an MLA member, has completed the certificate program and found that it broadened her horizons and led to a promotion. Another regular AMIA activity includes visiting legislators to discuss issues in informatics. This year, Medical Informatics Section member, Douglas Varner participated in AMIA’s Capitol Hill day.

Only a handful of medical librarians attended the AMIA Annual Symposium, and a few of those who have become active AMIA members are currently not in the MLA directory. This meeting was the first AMIA meeting I have attended in several years, but as before I found it to be stimulating to learn about new technologies in patient care, informatics methods being used to develop diagnostics and therapeutics, and policies related to health informatics. Attending AMIA meetings helps to get a better understanding of the milieu in which we work and would be beneficial to other MLA members. The AMIA annual symposium rotates between Washington, DC and other cities, and the smaller summits and congresses are also held in various cities, so MLA members should take advantage of the opportunity to attend when AMIA is in a nearby city.

MOTION

This report is informational and requires no action by the Board of Directors.

Janis F. Brown
MLA Representative to AMIA
January 9, 2009