AMIA, formerly known as the American Medical Informatics Association, is an American non-profit organization

Non-governmental organization

A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...

 dedicated to the development and application of biomedical and health informatics

Health informatics

.Health informatics is a discipline at the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care...

 in the support of patient care, teaching, research, and health care administration.

History

AMIA is the official United States representative to the International Medical Informatics Association

International Medical Informatics Association

IMIA or the International Medical Informatics Association is an independent organisation that plays a role in promoting and furthering the application of information science in modern society, particularly in the fields of healthcare, bioscience and medicine. It was established in 1967 as a...

. It has grown to more than 4,000 members from 42 countries worldwide. Together, these members represent all basic, applied, and clinical interests in health care information technology. It publishes the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in the field of medical informatics published by the American Medical Informatics Association....

.

Founding

AMIA was founded in 1989 by the merger of three organizations:

• American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics
  American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics
  The American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics was an organization created to encourage improvements in the state of medical care by encouraging the development of computer systems for that field....
  
  
• American College of Medical Informatics
  American College of Medical Informatics
  The American College of Medical Informatics, is a college of elected fellows from the United States and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics...
  
  
• Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care

Leadership

The first President and CEO of AMIA was Don E. Detmer

Don E. Detmer

Don E. Detmer, MD, MA, FACS, is Medical Director for Advocacy and Health Policy of the American College of Surgeons. He is also Professor Emeritus and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia and Visiting Professor at CHIME, University College of London.-Biography and...

. He was succeeded in July 2009 by Edward H. Shortliffe

Edward H. Shortliffe

Edward Hance Shortliffe, MD, PhD is a Canadian-born American biomedical informatician, physician and computer scientist. Dr. Shortliffe is a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine...

.

Membership

AMIA membership is open to individuals, institutions, and corporations. Members include physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, clinicians, health information technology professionals, computer and information scientists, biomedical engineers, consultants and industry representatives, medical librarians, academic researchers and educators, and advanced students pursuing a career in clinical informatics or health information technology.

Meetings and education

AMIA annually holds the following meetings:

• AMIA Annual Symposium
• The AMIA Joint Summit on Translational Science comprising:
  • AMIA Summit on Translational Bioinformatics
  • AMIA Summit on Clinical Research Informatics
• AMIA Now
• AMIA CMIO Boot Camp

Working and special interest groups

AMIA includes a number of working groups:

• Clinical Information Systems
• Clinical Research Informatics
• Consumer Health Informatics
  Consumer health informatics
  Consumer Health Informatics helps bridge the gap between patients and health resources. The Kaiser model is an example of allowing patients to remotely communicate with their physicians or other healthcare professionals....
  
  
• Dental Informatics
• Education
• Ethical, Legal, & Social Issues
• Evaluation
• Formal (Bio)Medical Knowledge Representation
• Genomics
• Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
• Knowledge in Motion
• Medical Imaging Systems
• Natural Language Processing
• Nursing Informatics
• Open Source
• People & Organizational Issues
• Pharmacoinformatics
• Primary Care Informatics
• Public health informatics
  Public health informatics
  Public Health Informatics has been defined as the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research, and learning...
  
  
• Student