Summary
Objective: As an international organization with the missions to promote informatics in health
care and biomedical research, advance international cooperation, stimulate research,
development and education, and disseminate and exchange information, the International
Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) must be constantly cognizant of new developments
in medical informatics and address the challenges to the discipline. From an international
organization standpoint, it perceives three major challenges viz. the Identity, Organizational
and Leadership challenges.
Method: This paper attempts to identify and discuss these challenges and to offer ways to
overcome them through the activities of an international organization for medical
informatics.
Results and Conclusion: From an international organization standpoint, IMIA can help overcome these organizational
challenges by ensuring strong leadership throughout its echelon, actively promoting
its goals and objectives worldwide through its national and institutional members
as well as its regional groups and encouraging strategic partnerships between its
many Working Groups and Special Interest Group on Nursing with other international
organizations and industry to further promote the awareness and the perception of
the relevance of medical informatics to health and medicine by the international community.
Keywords
Identity challenge - organizational challenge - leadership challenge - medical informatics
organization - international organization
