scholarly journals Students’ competence as eHealth and eWelfare service developers based on the International Medical Informatics Association IMIA’s curriculum structure and design thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Outi Maria Ahonen ◽  
Ulla-Mari Kinnunen ◽  
Jarmo Heinonen ◽  
Gun-Britt Lejonqvist ◽  
Elina Rajalahti ◽  
...  

Multidisciplinary cooperation is required to develop digital health and welfare services. The aim of this article is to determine the eHealth and eWelfare service design competences that multidisciplinary students need to be able to develop digital services in health and social care. A secondary aim is to develop a measurement tool based on the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) curriculm for future assessment of such competences. Based on basic descriptive statistics results show that most students felt they have good skills in e-communication, basic IT, literature retrieval and research methods; some students, however, reported that they lack these basic skills. It is crucial that instructors be aware of student variations so that they can support the learning of the basics and further the biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) and design thinking (DT) competences. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to determine the principal components (PC) from measured responses to BMHI and DT sections. Data were collected from 64 students. The components were explored and compared to constructs used to design the original measurement tool. A twenty-component structure showed the simplest solution and explained (80%, 68%, 73%) of variances in BMHI and 83% DT competences, respectively, in the measurement tool, each part of which was analysed by PCA. The PC can be the core areas in different professions taking part in developing eHealth and eWelfare. The parts of measurement tools relied on item reliability and content validity testing. This study provided a base for further measurement tool revision and theoretical testing.

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (01) ◽  
pp. 015-025
Author(s):  
Fernando Martin-Sanchez ◽  
Marion J. Ball ◽  
Michio Kimura ◽  
Paula Otero ◽  
Elaine Huesing ◽  
...  

Background: The International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) is the Academy of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). As an international forum for peers in biomedical and health informatics, the Academy shall play an important role in exchanging knowledge, providing education and training, and producing policy documents. Objectives: A major priority of the Academy’s activities in its inaugural phase was to define its strategy and focus areas in accordance with its objectives and to prioritize the Academy’s work, which can then be transferred to respective taskforces. Method: This document reflects the major outcomes of intensive discussions that occurred during 2019. It was presented at the Academy’s 3rd Plenary on August 25th, 2019, in Lyon, France. Results: Regardless of the ‘living nature’ of the strategy and focus areas document, it was concluded during the Plenary that the first version, which will be used as a base for decisions on the Academy’s future activities, should be made available to a broad audience. Three out of eight ‘Visions for IAHSI‘, presented in the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2018, were identified as central for developing, implementing, and evaluating the Academy’s strategic directions: (1) advise governments and organizations on developing health and health sciences through informatics, (2) stimulate progress in biomedical and health informatics research, education, and practice, and (3) share and exchange knowledge. Taskforces shall be implemented to work in the following areas, which were considered as priority themes: (1) artificial intelligence in health: future collaboration of entities with natural and with artificial intelligence in health care, and (2) current landscape of standards for digital health. Conclusions: Taskforces are now being established. Besides specific key performance indicators, suggested for monitoring the work of theses taskforces, the strategy to monitor the progress of the Academy itself has to be measured by relevant and acceptable metrics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 145-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Altwaijiri ◽  
B. Aldosari

Summary Objective The purpose of this paper is to describe the Health Informatics Master Program at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods We have reviewed health informatics master programs worldwide with more emphasis on the recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association on education in health informatics, research, and faculty/trainee participation at KSAU-HS. Results An applied health informatics master program has been designed where graduates will be able to deploy information and communication technology in support of health systems’ processes. This is due to the fact that most of health organizations are driven by information and communication technology. The program embodies the features of effective applied health informatics master programs recommended by the International Medical Informatics Association on education in health informatics and delineated as curricula integrating three areas of knowledge and skills: 1) Methodology and technology for the processing of data, information and knowledge in medicine and healthcare, 2) Medicine, health and biosciences, and 3) Informatics/ computer science, mathematics and biometry. Conclusions The health informatics master program (MHI) immerses students in the multidisciplinary field of health informatics education. Graduates of the MHI program will be wellprepared informaticians for leadership positions, able to meet the increasing demands in the field of health informatics to manage, plan, develop, and provide expert consultations to the healthcare sectors.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Wright

Background: The discipline of health or medical informatics is relatively new in that the literature has existed for only 40 years. The British Computer Society (BCS) health group was of the opinion that work should be undertaken to explore the scope of medical or health informatics. Once the mapping work was completed the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) expressed the wish to develop it further to define the knowledge base of the discipline and produce a comprehensive internationally applicable framework. This article will also highlight the move from the expert opinion of a small group to the analysis of publications to generalise and refine the initial findings, and illustrate the importance of triangulation.Objectives: The aim of the project was to explore the theoretical constructs underpinning the discipline of health informatics and produce a cognitive map of the existing understanding of the discipline and develop the knowledge base of health informatics for the IMIA and the BCS.Method: The five-phase project, described in this article, undertaken to define the discipline of health informatics used four forms of triangulation.Results: The output from the project is a framework giving the 14 major headings (Subjects) and 245 elements, which together describe the current perception of the discipline of health informatics.Conclusion: This article describes how each phase of the project was strengthened, through using triangulation within and between the different phases. This was done to ensure that the investigators could be confident in the confirmation and completeness of data, and assured of the validity and reliability of the final output of the ‘IMIA Knowledge Base’ that was endorsed by the IMIA Board in November 2009.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Scott ◽  
Ronald Cornet ◽  
Colin McCowan ◽  
Niels Peek ◽  
Paolo Fraccaro ◽  
...  

Introduction: The Informatics for Health congress, 24-26 April 2017, in Manchester, UK, brought together the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) conference and the Farr Institute International Conference. This special issue of the Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics contains 113 presentation abstracts and 149 poster abstracts from the congress.Discussion: The twin programmes of “Big Data” and “Digital Health” are not always joined up by coherent policy and investment priorities. Substantial global investment in health IT and data science has led to sound progress but highly variable outcomes. Society needs an approach that brings together the science and the practice of health informatics. The goal is multi-level Learning Health Systems that consume and intelligently act upon both patient data and organizational intervention outcomes.Conclusions: Informatics for Health demonstrated the art of the possible, seen in the breadth and depth of our contributions. We call upon policy makers, research funders and programme leaders to learn from this joined-up approach.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (02) ◽  
pp. 105-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Ammenwerth ◽  
G. Demiris ◽  
A. Hasman ◽  
R. Haux ◽  
W. Hersh ◽  
...  

Summary Objective: The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) agreed on revising the existing international recommendations in health informatics /medical informatics education. These should help to establish courses, course tracks or even complete programs in this field, to further develop existing educational activities in the various nations and to support international initiatives concerning education in biomedical and health informatics (BMHI), particularly international activities in educating BMHI specialists and the sharing of courseware. Method: An IMIA task force, nominated in 2006, worked on updating the recommendations’ first version. These updates have been broadly discussed and refined by members of IMIA’s National Member Societies, IMIA’s Academic Institutional Members and by members of IMIA’s Working Group on Health and Medical Informatics Education. Results and Conclusions: The IMIA recommendations center on educational needs for health care professionals to acquire knowledge and skills in information processing and information and communication technology. The educational needs are described as a three-dimensional framework. The dimensions are: 1) professionals in health care (e.g. physicians, nurses, BMHI professionals), 2) type of specialization in BMHI (IT users, BMHI specialists), and 3) stage of career progression (bachelor, master, doctorate). Learning outcomes are defined in terms of knowledge and practical skills for health care professionals in their role a) as IT user and b) as BMHI specialist. Recommendations are given for courses /course tracks in BMHI as part of educational programs in medicine, nursing, health care management, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, health record administration, and informatics /computer science as well as for dedicated programs in BMHI (with bachelor, master or doctor degree).To support education in BMHI, IMIA offers to award a certificate for high-quality BMHI education. It supports information exchange on programs and courses in BMHI through its Working Group on Health and Medical Informatics Education.


2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (03) ◽  
pp. 267-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Knaup ◽  
Reinhold Haux

AbstractThe International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) agreed on international recommendations in health informatics/medical informatics education. These should help to establish courses, course tracks or even complete programs in this field, to further develop existing educational activities in the various nations and to support international initiatives concerning education in health and medical informatics (HMI), particularly international activities in educating HMI specialists and the sharing of courseware.The IMIA recommendations centre on educational needs for healthcare professionals to acquire knowledge and skills in information processing and information and communication technology. The educational needs are described as a three-dimensional framework. The dimensions are: 1) professionals in healthcare (physicians, nurses, HMI professionals, …), 2) type of specialisation in health and medical informatics (IT users, HMI specialists) and 3) stage of career progression (bachelor, master, …).Learning outcomes are defined in terms of knowledge and practical skills for healthcare professionals in their role (a) as IT user and (b) as HMI specialist. Recommendations are given for courses/course tracks in HMI as part of educational programs in medicine, nursing, healthcare management, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, health record administration, and informatics/computer science as well as for dedicated programs in HMI (with bachelor, master or doctor degree).To support education in HMI, IMIA offers to award a certificate for high quality HMI education and supports information exchange on programs and courses in HMI through a WWW server of its Working Group on Health and Medical Informatics Education (http://www.imia.org/wg1).


Author(s):  
Farah Magrabi ◽  
Elske Ammenwerth ◽  
Catherine K. Craven ◽  
Kathrin Cresswell ◽  
Nicolet F. De Keizer ◽  
...  

Objectives: To highlight the role of technology assessment in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: An overview of existing research and evaluation approaches along with expert perspectives drawn from the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Working Group on Technology Assessment and Quality Development in Health Informatics and the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) Working Group for Assessment of Health Information Systems. Results: Evaluation of digital health technologies for COVID-19 should be based on their technical maturity as well as the scale of implementation. For mature technologies like telehealth whose efficacy has been previously demonstrated, pragmatic, rapid evaluation using the complex systems paradigm which accounts for multiple sociotechnical factors, might be more suitable to examine their effectiveness and emerging safety concerns in new settings. New technologies, particularly those intended for use on a large scale such as digital contract tracing, will require assessment of their usability as well as performance prior to deployment, after which evaluation should shift to using a complex systems paradigm to examine the value of information provided. The success of a digital health technology is dependent on the value of information it provides relative to the sociotechnical context of the setting where it is implemented. Conclusion: Commitment to evaluation using the evidence-based medicine and complex systems paradigms will be critical to ensuring safe and effective use of digital health technologies for COVID-19 and future pandemics. There is an inherent tension between evaluation and the imperative to urgently deploy solutions that needs to be negotiated.


RECIIS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Elias Penteado ◽  
Marcelo Fornazin ◽  
Leonardo Castro ◽  
Sandro Luis Freire

A saúde digital é um assunto emergente em fóruns acadêmicos, nas políticas públicas e nas organizações de saúde. Supondo que a saúde digital deriva de conhecimentos da informática médica, este artigo apresenta resultados de uma pesquisa bibliométrica sobre a evolução conceitual e tecnológica do campo da informática médica nas últimas décadas, enfatizando aspectos metodológicos. O trabalho realizou bibliometria em metadados de 100 mil artigos indexados sob a categoria ‘medical informatics’ na base de dados Web of Science entre os anos de 1960 e 2020. Foram realizadas análises longitudinais com utilização dos softwares Bibliometrix e CorText em três eixos: quantidade de publicações, países dos autores e palavras-chave. Conforme a hipótese metodológica que orientou o estudo, as mudanças terminológicas verificadas ao longo do tempo oferecem uma visão aproximativa das mudanças conceituais e tecnológicas do campo de pesquisa da informática médica. Os resultados mostram que esse campo de investigação apresentou crescimento consistente ao longo das últimas seis décadas, expandindo-se para diferentes países. As mudanças terminológicas e conceituais detectadas pela análise de palavras-chave permitiram a identificação de períodos temporais definidos, associados a rótulos genéricos como ‘health informatics’, ‘e-health’. O rótulo ‘medical informatics’ é recorrente como termo mais geral a designar o campo de aplicação, em razão de sua adoção por associações científicas internacionais a partir da década de 1970. Nos últimos cincos anos, pode-se identificar a emergência do termo ‘digital health’, que possivelmente será o conceito dominante na década que se inicia. A análise de palavras-chave também indica a associação entre mudanças terminológicas e de tecnologias, o que reforça as relações entre conceitos e aplicações tecnológicas de cada período.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (01) ◽  
pp. 065-068
Author(s):  
Meryl Bloomrosen ◽  
Eta S. Berner ◽  

Objectives: To summarize the recent literature and research and present a selection of the best papers published in 2018 in the field of Health Information Management (HIM) and Health Informatics. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed, with the help of a medical librarian, by the two editors of the HIM section of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook. In order to include papers that would address the special theme of the 2019 Yearbook on artificial intelligence (AI) as well as HIM, we searched bibliographic databases for HIM-related papers with an AI focus using both Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) descriptors and keywords in titles and abstracts. A shortlist of 15 candidate best papers was first selected by section editors before being peer-reviewed by independent external reviewers. Results: While there were a significant number of manuscripts that addressed issues relevant to HIM, there were virtually none with MeSH headings indicating an HIM focus. Manuscripts that were considered related to the HIM field in terms of the practice of health information management as well as the profession included those that examined using machine learning and other AI approaches to identify protected health information in clinical text to aid with de-identification, automated coding approaches to translate free-text into standardized codes, and natural language processing approaches to extract clinical data to assist with populating cancer and other registries. Conclusions: The papers discussed in the HIM section reflect the special theme of the use of AI in healthcare on issues particularly relevant to the field of HIM. This synopsis discusses these papers and recommends that HIM practitioners be more involved in research and that researchers in AI and related areas recognize the applicability and relevance of their work to the field of HIM.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (03) ◽  
pp. 305-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Haux ◽  
P. J. Murray

Summary Background: Education has long been, and continues to be, one of the major thematic areas of the activities of IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association. Objective: To report on IMIA’s past activities and to discuss possible future perspectives on IMIA’s role on biomedical and health informatics education. Methods: Summarizing past activities by searching in reports and publications. Making suggestions for wider discussion on possible future activities. Results: Since its inception, IMIA has been active in the field of education, mainly through its working group on education. Among other activities, nine working conferences have been held, many of which have resulted in publications as outcomes, which have helped to exchange knowledge on the development of high-quality health and biomedical informatics education. Recommendations on education in health and medical informatics were endorsed by IMIA in 1999, and a revised version is currently in preparation. Conclusions: IMIA should continue to stimulate the exchange of knowledge on a range of aspects of health and biomedical informatics education in the countries and regions of the world, with IMIA’s academic institutional members playing an increasing role. Establishing procedures for the international accreditation of high-level programs in health and biomedical informatics through IMIA is one of several areas that need to be discussed as IMIA plans and develops its future activities.


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