Preparing for change: Medical informatics international initiatives for health care and biomedical research

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Abstract

The intention of this paper is to reflect on the development of medical informatics as a discipline and on the development of IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association, as its international organization. IMIA is the international organization in health and biomedical informatics, which has the goal of stimulating and communicating high quality research, education and application, with medical informatics now being one of the central disciplines for achieving health for the people in societies worldwide. The need for new international initiatives is discussed and IMIA's recently approved Strategic Plan as well as its joint initiative with WHO are presented as examples.

Section snippets

Preparing for change?

“Medical informatics as a medical discipline has developed over the last decades  The question is raised whether this new science, based on formalized and methodological approaches, may contribute to the development of a general theory in medicine …” ([1], p. 89)

In 1987, 20 years ago, Professor Peter Reichertz (1930–1987) wrote a landmark paper on “preparing for change: concepts and education in medical informatics” in this journal ([1], preprint version in [2]). Fig. 1 illustrates parts of the

On the adolescence of medical informatics

“Medical imaging informatics will bring about a revolution in medicine in the 21st century, introducing a collection of powerful new tools designed to better assist clinical diagnosis and to model, stimulate, and guide patient's therapy more efficiently …” ([4], p. 89)

In referring to [5] one may ask, whether medical informatics is still in its earliest phase or whether it has already become mature and has proven that it can be “regarded as a separate discipline” ([6]).

In my opinion – but one

Medical informatics and IMIA

As mentioned above, IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association has recently celebrated its 40th birthday. IMIA is the only organization in biomedical informatics which is fully international in scope, bridging the academic, health practice, education, and health industry worlds through conferences, working groups and publications.

A comprehensive summary of IMIA publications in the past decades can be found in [38]. Besides the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics, I would like to

Medical informatics international initiatives and IMIA

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family …” (United Nations; Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 25(1), [52])

Preparing for change!

“Many things have to be done and can be done, let us not just sit back …; let us not only react to events which induce a change, let us actively prepare for a meaningful evolution.” ([1], p. 100)

Medical informatics until now has considerably contributed to progress in research, education and practice in health care and biomedical research. Yet we have by no means reached the stage that Peter Reichertz wrote about in his 1987 paper, concluding that there is a need for a formalized theory on the

Acknowledgements

The author cordially thanks Torgny Groth, the editor of Computer Programs and Methods in Biomedicine for giving him the opportunity to submit this paper, as well as the reviewers, not only for their helpful comments, but also for accepting to review this paper in a very timely manner. As so often, I received helpful advice from Casimir Kulikowski, Rutgers University at New Brunswick.

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    The text contains the inaugural speech of the author as IMIA President for the years 2007–2010, given on August 24, 2007 during Medinfo 2007 at Brisbane, Australia. It is dedicated to Professor Franz Josef Leven, one of my most important teachers, who retired this year.

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