North American Medical Informatics (NAMI)

AMIA – Informatics Professionals: Leading the Way

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) represents more than 5,600 healthcare professionals, students, informatics researchers, practitioners, and thought-leaders in biomedicine, healthcare, and science. AMIA's members are subject matter experts in the science and practice of informatics as it relates to clinical care, research, education, and policy. They address challenges across the continuum of the health ecosystem'consumers and patients, healthcare providers and care delivery systems, population and public health, and basic and clinical research with the ultimate goal to advance better health, better healthcare, and improved efficiency through the use of informatics and information technology.

Health Informatics Certification

AMIA established the AMIA Health Informatics Certification (AHIC) program to address the needs created by the growing number and expanding role of health informaticians and the concomitant increased impact of their work in healthcare delivery, public health, and consumer health. AMIA established the Health Informatics Certification Commission (HICC) to manage the program with impartiality and objectivity. The HICC is independent and autonomous with respect to certification and recertification decisions, policies, and procedures. To ensure the integrity of the AHIC certification program and its exams, there is a strict firewall between the HICC and certification staff (on one side of the firewall) and AMIA education staff, Education Committee members, course developers and instructors, and the Board of Directors (on the other side of the firewall).

The AHIC Program is dedicated to enhancing and promoting the health informatics profession by providing the premier health informatics credential program. The AHIC program accomplishes this mission by establishing standards for professional practice; creating a fair, valid, and reliable examination process by which professionals can demonstrate their knowledge and skill; granting certification to those who meet the program's standards; and communicating the value of the credential to employers and other key constituencies.

AHIC is intended for professionals who come from a range of educational and training pathways including, but not limited to, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, health informatics, and computer science use informatics concepts and tools to design solutions to complex problems or identify opportunities for improvement in health care, public health, or consumer health at the individual, unit, organization, or system level have health informatics experience that includes critical thinking and analysis; independent decision-making; project management; managing personnel, resources or partner relationships; leading or supporting teams; policy development; or strategic planning AHIC assesses competence of health informatics professionals whose work may impact organizational performance or affect public safety. As a result, the AHIC program emphasizes operational, rather than research-focused dimensions of informatics.

The AHIC process involves three major elements -- eligibility determination, examination to assess competence, and recertification requirements. Pursuant to best practice, the 2019 Health Informatics Practice Analysis and resulting Health Informatics Delineation of Practice underpin AHIC eligibility criteria and the AHIC Outline of Exam Topics. An individual who meets the AHIC eligibility criteria, passes the AHIC exam, and fulfills recertification requirements is known as an AMIA Certified Health Informatics Professional or ACHIP™.

Significant progress has been made on the AHIC Certification Program in 2021. The exam window opened to eligible candidates on October 1st. In order to accommodate candidates and allow more time for preparation, the exam window was extended until January 16th, 2022. This change addressed comments we were receiving from potential candidates that the current state of the healthcare industry, due to the pandemic, was possibly a barrier to testing when the window was originally set to end on October 31st. As of Thursday, October 15th, we have received 101 paid applications.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a strategic umbrella encompassing multiple concerns including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, LGBTQIA+, and ability, and initiatives and activities involving affinity groups, S.T.E.M pipeline, program development, education content, leadership development, and mentoring. All are cross-organizational issues affecting AMIA's individual and organizational membership through governance and staff work in membership, education, meetings, marketing communications, and public policy.

AMIA has charged a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Task Force whose purpose is to guide and execute strategic goals and objectives related to diversity, equity and inclusion through recommendations to the AMIA Board of Directors. Their charge includes an environmental scan off ways that other organizations are addressing this issue, creating a framework for developing exposure and retention for students and professionals, and hosting engagement sessions to better inform the task force on issues and potential solutions. They will provide DEI education to AMIA leadership and members and increase awareness of the benefits of DEI towards advancing innovation and excellence in our healthcare system. The goal is to expand awareness of informatics training and careers to a wider, diverse population to create a stronger, more dynamic workforce. We expect that the lessons learned and successful experiences can inform societies in other countries as well.

There are five subcommittees:

1. Recruitment: external outreach to marginalized or historically excluded groups to build awareness of AMIA and the informatics profession;

2. Retention and Advancement: internally focused on growing a diverse set of AMIA leaders;

3. Communications: promote diverse informatics voices, research, and activities through AMIA communications channels and advocate for more inclusive research in informatics journals;

4. Education, Governance, and Policy: build DEI practices into AMIA's structure; contribute to policy responses; support DEI member education activities;

5. Advancement of Health Equity and Antiracism in Healthcare: position AMIA to become a thought leader in addressing these topics at the intersection with informatics; serve as an organizational convener for education, research, and policy.

A workgroup composed of DEI and SPC committee members created a set of inclusive language recommendations, as one way of furthering an inclusive culture within AMIA. By using inclusive language, AMIA can signal researchers from a more diverse range of backgrounds that their scholarship is welcomed and respected. As a result, these efforts support scholars from marginalized and historically excluded backgrounds to contribute ideas and understanding that would not have previously been considered. Over the past few months, this workgroup has met with AMIA Staff, SPC leadership, and others in the DEI field to develop and refine the proposed recommendations, understanding that this is the start of an important conversation.

Conference on Reducing Clinical Documentation Burden

AMIA sponsored a conference, in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine, on reducing clinical documentation burden in January 2021 with the following goals:

• Create a meeting that engages a diverse group of key stakeholders and leaders focused on reducing documentation burden;

• Assess the likely potential for burden reduction within each category of documentation burden tasks;

• Establish approaches for immediate (6 months), short-term (12 months), and longer term (30 months) elimination of clinical documentation burden;

• Develop a 25x5 Community of stakeholders and allies to keep momentum going and to support dissemination and change;

• Maximize consideration, design, development, and implementation of technology solutions that promote, assure and potentially enhance health equity of any proposed solutions.

The conference was held over six sessions in partnership Vanderbilt and Columbia Universities, with over 300 participants. Details about the Symposium and its outputs are available here: https://www.dbmi.columbia.edu/25x5/.

Teleworking

The AMIA office transitioned to complete teleworking for all activities in March 2020. Virtual status became permanent in May 2021, with closure of our physical office in Bethesda, Maryland.

Conferences

AMIA 2021 Virtual Informatics Summit, March 22-25

AMIA has assembled the most content ever obtained from an Informatics Summit for continuing professional development and learning. Scientific and education content featured at the AMIA 2021 Virtual Informatics Summit is still available as one comprehensive Digital Collection including over 100 hours of presentations from AMIA's translational research-focused conference including content in four major tracks: Bioinformatics, Clinical Research Informatics, Informatics Implementation, and Data Science. The opening keynote address from Norman E. “Ned” Sharpless and the closing keynote address from Abigail Echo-Hawk were features of the event along with the Translational Bioinformatics and Data Science Year in Review by Nicholas Tatonetti and the Clinical Research Informatics and Informatics Implementation Year in Review by Peter Embi.

AMIA 2021 Virtual Clinical Informatics Conference, May 18-20

The Clinical Informatics Conference – CIC – is making a mark on healthcare. CIC is where clinician informaticists of all disciplines – physicians, nurses, physician assistants, technicians, HIT developers, data analysts, C-suite executives, and more – share their innovations in bringing the technology advances out of the lab and into the patient room. Our collective goal is to leverage technology in new ways, to advance healthcare delivery, access and outcomes. CIC featured workshops and presentations provided attendees with practical tools to bring to their home institution to continue the goal of achieving the quadruple aim. The conference's unbiased, evidence and importantly experience-based content helped each of us foster and build a true learning health system. More than 600 dedicated informaticians gathered virtually to share ideas and experiences to create progress in care delivery. A digital collection is also available.

AMIA 2021 Annual Symposium, October 30-November 3

We were thrilled to welcome back the informatics community at our first in person event since 2019! The Annual Symposium continued to build on more than 40 years of sharing research and insights for leveraging information to improve human health. The symposium showcased the latest innovations from the community of biomedical informatics researchers and practitioners. Among many other things, the pandemic made us aware of the value of our community – a community that we have missed: colleagues, mentors, experts, and students with a shared interest in informatics. The past year demonstrated the necessity in our country for access to information to improve health and health care, and the need for professionals to use and apply that information to transform health care. Chaired by Adam Wilcox and an outstanding team of informatics leaders, the meeting featured over 200 presentations and most importantly brought opportunities for conversation and collaboration. While we were not able to host all due to travel constraints, we hope to see you at the AMIA 2022 Annual Symposium in Washington, DC!

Publication History

Article published online:
02 June 2022