4 APAMI Executive
The APAMI leadership consists of: President: Dr KH Cho (Korea) Immediate Past President:
Dr SB Gogia (India) Past President: Dr Ying Wu (China) Secretary: A/Prof Klaus D Veil
(Australia) Treasurer: Dr CP Wong (Hong Kong)
APAMI communicates with its stakeholders and community of interest through the News@APAMI.org
e-mail list, which currently has more than 340 organizations and individuals, as well
as our twitter news feed at www.twitter.com/APAMInews.
Please find the reports from the APAMI member countries below.
Australia
A/Prof Klaus Veil - Immediate Past President, Australasian College of Health Informatics
(ACHI) & HISA
On 1 July 2016 the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) replaced the National e-Health
Transition Au-thority (NEHTA) to provide direction in developing digital health, bringing
the Australian health system into the digital century. Former NHS England director
of information Tim Kelsey has been appointed CEO of the Agency.
The Agency’s focus will be on expanding Australia’s “My Health Record” national EHR
system to be accessible on mobile devices and provide APIs to allow patients and health
professionals to access their record anywhere at any time. Currently, only 16.5% of
the Australian population has a national electronic health record.
The national health informatics conference “HIC16” was held 24–27 July 2016 and attended
by over 1,200 participants. Over 150 speakers covered topics such as clinical informatics
innovation, electronic medication management, digital hospital design, Health IT standards
and interoperability, health information workforce challenges, and more. HISA also
held a “Hacking Health” event that allowed students and young professionals to pitch
and develop digital health start-up products. Awards honoring the Australian e-Health
pioneer Branko Cesnik were given to the best general and student papers. The scientific
program was managed by the Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI).
ACHI has also published the first comprehensive directory of education programs for
the Health Information Professions in Australia and New Zealand. The College had identified
that many state, territories, and federal health authorities and health industry employers
are unaware of the education options in the Health Information profession. The directory
lists vocational, undergraduate, and postgraduate education and training programs;
ACHI hopes this will encourage more Health Information professionals on the journey
from entry-level to advanced and formal qualifications.
China
Lieping Wu - China Medical Informatics Association (CMIA)
2016 has been a busy and exciting year for CMIA. We organized and hosted the 14th
National Congress on Health and Medical Informatics (CMIA2016), Xiamen, China in September
of the year. The conference was successful with over 700 attendees. The conference
covered a range of topics in parallel forums, from medical informatics, mobile and
telemedicine, hospital information systems and integration, electronic medical record
(EMR) and electronic health record (EHR), information processing and systems for Chinese
medicine, cloud computing in healthcare, nursing informatics, medical big data application,
and medical imaging, and more. The conference promoted nation-wide the use of new
technologies in medical practice and pushing for healthcare reforms with the themes
of merging new technologies, exploiting big medical data, and discussing new medical
reforms.
CMIA also worked hard to promote for Med-Info2017. The delegations of CMIA were sent
to APAMI2016, CJK2016, New Zealand, Australia, etc. to promote MedInfo2017 as well
as scholarly activities. For example, the trip to APAMI2016 in Seoul, Korea, was very
successful with the help of APAMI organizers. We are glad to see that the paper submissions
to MedInfo2017 surpassed 600 with the Asia-Pacific region as the top contributor.
In APAMI2016 trip, CMIA delegates also attended the APAMI general assembly meeting
to jointly discuss APAMI affairs along with the delegates from other member countries.
HongKong
C P Wong - Hong Kong Society of Medical Informatics (HKSMI)
In 2016 Hong Kong has made a major advancement by officially launching the Territory-wide
Electronic Health Record Sharing System on 13 March 2017, linking the 40 public hospitals,
160 public clinics to the 12 private hospitals and more than 2,000 private institutions
and private practitioners in Hong Kong. This system is the result of the five years
hard work of preparation in all the essentials of standardized terminology and a robust
legal framework. Tremendous training and lobbying efforts were spent to make this
roll out smooth and successful. By the end of the year, more than 400 thousand persons
opted-in to enroll into the system for the sharing, and practically all the private
institutions have been on the bandwagon. The work left to be done is to engage the
private solo clinics and to upload their data with free flow to enrich the central
database, which at present contains more than 9 million personal records covering
a period of 20 years. A very successful EHR Conference was held in July with more
than 800 participants and 16 vendors in support. Very useful academic and business
showcases were exhibited. By all accounts, it was the best ever conference held in
the last two decades.
Work has already been started to the second phase of the Electronic Health Record
Sharing Platform that will include images sharing and patient portals.
India
Oommen John - President, Indian Association for Medical Informatics (IAMI)
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare officially released a revised National EHR
Interoperability Standards for India in December 2016, after the initial release in
2013. Several members of IAMI have played a key role in the conceptualization, drafting,
and policy advocacy for these standards, which is now officially launched. This endeavor
has set the pathway for the ambitious Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP),
which would serve as a national health information exchange. IAMI members are playing
a strategic role in the consultations that are underway towards developing the roadmap
for IHIP. India is also working towards a NDHA (National Digital Health Authority
of India), which will provide the policy and legal framework for digital health in
India. The current Centre for Health Informatics, National Health Portal (CHI-NHP)
will evolve into a National Health Informatics Institute towards capacity building
in health informatics.
In December 2016, the Second Revision of EHR standards (first released in October
2013) was released by the Ministry of Health.
IAMI held its first ever Connectathon at St Johns Research Institute, Bangalore. Manick
Rajendran, Sathish Ratakonda, Anirudha Nene, Shashi Bhushan Gogia, and Thanga Prabhu
formed the core organizing team from IAMI. Over 20 Healthcare IT/EMR and imaging modalities
vendors participated in the two days long event. The contestants were provided clinical
scenarios and challenged to create clinical records to demonstrate interoperability
capabilities across modalities, such as imaging. Over 100 enthusiastic participants
were able to witness ‘interoperability in real life’ for the first time, which opened
avenues for further collaborations and partnerships. The report of the Connectathon
was shared with the key stakeholders to increase its awareness in the healthcare ecosystem,
and reinforce interoperability as the ubiquitous foundation for any meaningful usage
of data.
IAMI members have been assisting the government in its various informatics efforts.
IAMI has been engaged in providing thought leadership at different forums across the
country and internationally, prominent amongst these have been Healthcare Leaders
Forum, Transforming Healthcare with IT, and Health Informatics Summit. IAMI was well
represented at APAMI 2016 with several original research papers in the various thematic
tracks.
Ambient and exciting discussions - which had been continuing in IAMI’s various email
forums, such as ami_gen@googlegroups.com and medinfo-india@yahoogroups.com - have
now been shifted to an exclusive members-only forum. However, an APAMI wide group
has been opened news@apami.org. Membership to the APAMI group is open to all across
the globe.
IAMI members are currently engaged in preparing a policy paper for the introduction
of health informatics in medical and nursing education through experiential learning.
A draft paper has been prepared by active IAMI members along with contributions from
mainstream academicians. A consultation meeting is scheduled at New Delhi in early
January involving stakeholders from the Government, Healthcare Enterprises, and Regulatory
Agencies. The proceedings of the meeting would be tabled to the Ministry of Health
for their further consideration.
ISO TC 215 standards are being published in India through the Bureau of Indian Standards
(BIS). Most of the key work is being done by IAMI members, who have been nominated,
and they are actively participating in various global ISO WG meetings. A public symposium
was held on 11 January 2017 that included IAMI members Rahil Qamar Siddiqui, Suman
Bhattacharyya, Shashi Bhushan Gogia, and Supten Sarbhadhikari as key speakers.
Current Office-bearers of IAMI are:
President: Oommen John
Vice President: Thanga Prabhu
Secretary: Sathish Babu Rathakonda
Treasurer: U S Mahalanobish
International Representative: Senthil Nachimuthu
IJMI Editor: Ajit Kumar
Japan
Prof. Tomohiro Sawa - International Committee, Japan Association for Medical Informatics
(JAMI)
As of 31 December 2016, JAMI is consisting of 2,590 regular members, 636 affiliate
members, and more than 500 members in other categories.
In June 2016, JAMI started with new board members. The former president Mihoko Okada
completed the term successfully and JAMI filed another history of prosperity. The
president Kazuhiko Ohe has lead new board members since June 2016.
The annual spring conference was held jointly with the Japanese Society for Artificial
Intelligence (JSAI) on June 2nd – 4th in Shimane prefecture. The theme of the conference
was “Artificial intelligence as the foundation of next-generation medical ICT infrastructure”.
More than 1,000 researchers from JAMI, JSAI, and others gathered and discussed on
hot topics in biomedical informatics and the future of artificial intelligence.
The 36th Joint Conference on Medical Informatics was held on 21-24 November 2016 in
Yokohama. More than 3,100 attendees joined to the conference and more than 300 presentations
were made. During the conference, the 17th CJKMI was held on November 22. More than
50 researchers from China, Korea, Japan, and other countries attended the conference
and 18 presentations were made.
A new specialty of medicine, Japan board of public health and social medicine was
established in December 2016. The board is consisting of the society of epidemiology,
public health, occupational medicine, health administration, medical informatics,
and others. The board will accept new fellows in spring of 2017.
New Zealand
Inga Hunter - Healthcare Informatics New Zealand (HINZ)
In New Zealand, we are experiencing sustained and significant growth year on year.
In 2016, our two hour free ‘Primer’ sessions for clinicians attracted record attendances
of 40-60 clinicians (up from 5-10 people two years earlier). We believe this growth
is being driven by a growing recognition of the importance of health IT in the clinical
environment.
Healthcare Informatics New Zealand (HiNZ) as an organization is taking action to reduce
fragmentation within the sector by forming proactive collaborations with other NGOs
in the clinical and technology space and, in some cases, conducting joint events for
members.
In November 2016, in recognition of the constraints of busy professionals with limited
CPD funding, we co-located our two local conferences (HiNZ & the Nursing Informatics
Conference) with two international telehealth events, to deliver four concurrent conferences
in one week in Auckland, New Zealand. Delegates registered once and were able to attend
any session across the four conferences. We kept registration fees affordable (only
NZ$898 for a three day conference). We achieved a record HiNZ attendance of 1,100
delegates from 20 countries, including 260 speakers. We also had a 200% rise in author
submissions to the HiNZ Conference compared to last year and exhibition bookings were
30% up on the previous year, representing a significant investment from local health
IT industry.
Most of the growth in the submissions and registrations for the conference came from
clinicians. It appears that the NZ market is moving from an ‘early adopter’ to an
‘early majority’ mindset, in regards to the awareness of, and engagement with, health
IT by clinicians.
Philippines
Dr Alvin Marcelo - Philippine Medical Informatics Society (PMIS)
The Philippine Medical Informatics Society (PMIS) has expanded to more than 1,200
members and contin-ues to nurture the society through social media - www.facebook.com/groups/philmedinfo. Several PMIS members provide civil society and professional representation to the
National eHealth Governance Structure - the formal organizational process to develop
a comprehensive eHealth program in the country. The National eHealth Program is led
by the Steering Committee chaired by the Secretary of Health and comprises the Secretaries
of Science and Technology, Information and Communications Technology, the President
of PhilHealth, and the Chancellor of the University of the Philippines Manila. The
Steering Committee evaluates stakeholder needs, sets directions, and monitors the
progress of the national eHealth program.
PMIS members have been officially appointed to the following committees and working
groups of the National eHealth Program:
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The Technical Working Group (an analog of the IT Strategy Committee as per the WHO-ITU
National eHealth Strategy Toolkit). The TWG meets monthly and aligns, plans, and organizes
the activities of the major stakeholder agencies along the directions set by the Steering
Committee.
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The Standards Expert Group (SEG) was directed to create and maintain a catalog of
standards for use by health information systems. The SEG extended their work with
the production of the Standards Change Management Manual.
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The Privacy Expert Group (PEG) was directed to ensure that all eHealth systems in
the country obtain proper guidance on how to comply with the Data Privacy Act of 2012.
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The Advisers Group represents the private sector and ranges representation from hospitals,
ICT companies, and health professional organizations.
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The Electronic Medical Records Expert Group (EMREG) comprises implementers of solutions
in government frontline clinics.
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The Health Enterprise Architecture Expert Group (HEAEG) maintains the enterprise architecture
for health sector in the country.
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The Risk Management Expert Group keeps track of business risks of the National eHealth
Program.
A National eHealth Summit is being planned to be convened by the Secretary of Health
with the assistance of the PMIS.
On the international side, PMIS founding chair is connected to the other APAMI members
Drs. Boonchai Kijsanyotin (Thailand), Dr Anis Fuad (Indonesia,) and Mr. Jai Ganesh
(India) and established the Asia eHealth Information Network (www.aehin.org) with support from the World Health Organization, Asian Development Bank, UNICEF,
NO-RAD, and other development partners. The goal of AeHIN is to specifically support
the national eHealth strategies of ministries of health in Asia. The 5th AeHIN General
Meeting will be co-hosted by the Ministry of Health and Sports Myanmar in Naypyitaw,
March 6 to 10, 2017. An invitation has been extended to the president of APAMI to
participate.
Singapore
Adam Chee - Association for Medical & Bioinformatics Singapore (AMBIS)
AMBIS recovered from a three-year “hiatus” with a new Executive Committee elected
on the 25 April 2016, comprising:
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President: Dr. Adam Chee - BinaryHealthCare (BNHC)
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Vice-President: Dr. Lam Tze Hau - Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
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Secretary: Dr. Kenneth Ban - National University of Singapore (NUS)
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Treasurer: Dr. Hu YongLi - Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
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Ordinary Committee Member: Mr. Gab Sim - The Healthcare Board (THCB)
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Ordinary Committee Member: Michael Xue Ming - Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH), Singapore
The following (key) activities were held in 2016:
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HL7 Singapore - AMBIS Joint Summit 2016, 19 August 2016, Singapore
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15th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCOB 2016), 21 - 23 September 2016,
Singapore
AMBIS is the process of re-engaging the local stakeholders in the area of Heath Informatics
and also working with HL7 Singapore to setup the National IHE Chapter for Singapore
(housed under HL7 Singapore).
South Korea
In Young Choi - Korean Society of Medical Informatics (KOSMI)
As of January 13, 2017, KOSMI has more than 6,000 different types of members consisting
of 223 life-time members, 130 full members, 43 student members, 5,669 Web members,
and 12 institute members.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Republic of Korea is continuously conducting
a clinical information exchange pilot project. In 2016, patient care information from
two large hospital groups was ex-changed between the international terminology standard
and the HL7 CDA standard. In 2017, the pilot business continues to expand through
the exchange of medical information from six large hospital groups.
KOSMI plays a very important role in the field of biomedical informatics in Korea
by providing opportunities for sharing and exchanging information and knowledge in
the field. Main activities of the KOSMI include hosting regular biannual academic
conferences, seminars on different topics, and publishing the Health Informatics Research
(HIR), an official journal of KOSMI four times per year.
The spring conference was held at College of Medicine, Ajou University in Seoul from
June 23 to June 24. The theme of the conference was “Future of Health Changed by Artificial
Intelligence” and 334 members participated in the conference. There were three tutorials,
10 symposiums, 20 paper presentations, and 36 poster presentations. Three papers and
one poster were awarded and recognized as the best papers and poster respectively
at the conference.
KOSMI published the 22nd volume of the HIR in 2016. The KOSMI currently publishes
two issues completely in English. In general, each issue publishes one review article,
6-10 original research articles, a case report, and two book reviews. The Journal
was accredited by the Korea Research Foundation in 2006 and registered as one of the
prestigious academic journals in Korea.
KOSMI organized “9th Asia Pacific Association of Medical Informatics 2016” at The-K
Hotel Seoul, Seoul on 02nd – 05th Nov 2016 and the chairman of the organizing committee
were Kyung-Hee Cho and Ju-Han Kim. The organizing committee consisting of Hasuk Bae
(Organizing Secretary), Jae-Ho Lee (Organizing Secretary), In Young Choi (Scientific
Program), Hyoun-Joong Kong, Seol-Kyung Baek, Younghee Lee, Young Ah Kim, Soo-Yong
Shin, Il Kon Kim, Hyeoun-Ae Park, Jinwook Choi, and Hun Sung Kim (Organizing Committees).
The committee worked hard and toiled to make the conference a grand success. The conference
was attended by 371 delegates from 15 countries coming from different spheres of Healthcare
and Medical Informatics. Amongst some of the eminent speakers and delegates for the
above conference were Fernando Martin-Sanchez PhD from USA, Dr Yu-Chuan (Jack) Li
from Taiwan, and Dr Seong K. Mun from USA. A total of 104 Papers were received and
100 were accepted.
Sri Lanka
Prof Vajira Dissanayake - President, Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka (HISSL)
The HISSL board was reconstituted in February 2016 and now it is comprised of:
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President: Prof Vajira H. W. Dissanayake MBBS, PhD, FNASSL
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President Elect: Dr Rohana Marasinghe MBBS, PhD
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Secretary: Dr Achala Jayatilleke MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics), PhD
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Assistant Secretary: Dr Chaminda Weer-abaddana MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics)
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Treasurer: Dr. Pandula Siribaddana MBBS
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Assistant Treasurer: Dr. Premil Liyanage MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics)
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Executive Vice Presidents: Dr. Prasad Ranatunga MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics)
(Conference and Events); Dr. Rikaz Sheriff MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics) (Continuous
Professional Development); Dr. Clive James MD, MSc (Biomedical Informatics) (Standards
and Inter-operability); Dr. Pamod Amarakoon MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics) (Member
Affairs); Dr. Rajalingam Niranjan(Clinical Information Systems) MBBS, MSc (Biomedical
Informatics); Dr. Nishan Silva (Journal and Publications) MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics);
Dr. Janaka Wickramarathne MBBs, MSc (Biomedical Informatics) (Public Health Information
Systems); Dr. Kusal Wijeweera MBBS, MSc (Biomedical Informatics) (Ethics and Accreditation)
The major activity for HISSL during the second half of the year 2016 included organizing
and conducting the Commonwealth Medical Associations 24th Triennial Conference 2016
on the theme Digital Health for Health and Wellbeing (http://www.cma2016.org). The conference was a grand success. The HISSL is now partnering with the Commonwealth
Medical Association as its main partner to establish a Commonwealth Digital Health
Network and a Commonwealth Institute of Digital Health.
HISSL flagship project initiated in 2016, the District Nutrition Monitoring System
(DNMS), has now been successfully implemented in three districts. It is now been scaled
up to other parts of the country. The mobile app of the DNMS won the award for the
best early stage app at the mBillianth awards in New Delhi in July 2016, the Commonwealth
Digital Health Awards in October 2016, and the eSwabhimani National Awards in November
2016.
The second half the year concluded in December on a high note with the selection of
the first batch of students for the MD in Health Informatics programme of the University
of Colombo supported by HISSL. After graduation these Health Informaticians will become
the first batch of Board Eligible Health Informatics Specialists in Sri Lanka fulfilling
HISSLs dream of recognising Health Informatics as a medical specialty in Sri Lanka.
Taiwan
Polun Chang - Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics (TAMI)
The Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics (TAMI) successfully held two annual
national conferences, the Joint Conference on Medical Informatics in Taiwan (JC-MIT2017)
and the Hospital CIO Summit.
TAMI actively worked with other institutes, associations, industries, and international
organizations in promoting activities, cooperation, and business:
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Smart Hospital
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Happy Living for the Elderly
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Paperless Organization
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Innovation in Healthcare
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Wearable Devices and Exercises
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Learning Healthcare Systems
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Taiwan Health Clouds, Health Insurance Clouds, CDC Clouds
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Personal Health Records and Standards
We supported association members to apply and run national grants in:
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CDC Clouds Development
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Thintank in Wearable Devices and Internet of Things
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Development of Standards for Personal Health Records
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Upgrading the Claim Clouds of our National Health Insurance
TAMI also actively promoted Graduate Programs in Biomedical Informatics and attracted
more young pro-fessionals. TAMI encouraged local submissions for the Med-info 2017
and joined the Medinfo 2017 LOC to prepare for the conference.
We are running and upgrading the Medical Informatics Competency Exams and we have
the first Full-score candidate.
In addition, TAMI founded the Taiwan Association of Medical Informatics Foundation
and moved to own offices.
For more information, please contact APAMI Secretary A/Prof Klaus Veil at Secretary@APAMI.org
Thailand
Dr. Boonchai Kijsanayotin - Vice President, Thai Medical Informatics Association (TMI)
The Thai Medical Informatics Association (TMI) has played a crucial role in the field
of biomedical and health informatics in Thailand by working with both local and international
health communities and industries to increase sharing and exchanging news, information,
and knowledge in the field. As of July 2016, TMI has 544 registered members and around
50% are health care professionals.
Regular activities of the TMI include hosting biannual academic conferences, a mid-year
healthcare CIO and annual national health IT conference. Several Health IT/eHealth
seminars/workshops on different topics such as health data analytics workshops and
introduction to health IT/eHealth seminars have been provided to members and general
public. In 2017, our mid-year Healthcare CIO forum was held with the HIMSS Asia Pac
2016 Conference in Bangkok on 24-25 August 2016. There were 113 CIO-level participants
attending our midyear CIO forum. TMI’s 2016 annual and national health IT conference
was successfully held in Bangkok on 23rd-25th November 2016; 312 Health IT professional
attended the conference. The theme of the conference was “Health Information Exchange
for Better Healthcare”
TMI has published the Health IT Quality Improvement Framework (HITQIF) including the
hospital IT improvement guideline and has worked together with the Ministry of Public
Health (MOPH) to implement the framework and guideline in 34 public and private hospitals.
TMI also launched its official journal this year: The Journal of the Thai Medical
Informatics Association (JTMI), the official journal of the Thai Medical Informatics
Association (TMI), publishes biannually peer-reviewed original articles in English
and Thai. TMI also communicates with members and public through TMI Newsletter, which
publishes every 3 months, mailing list and social media.
Together with representatives from the Philippine Medical Informatics Society (Philippines),
HISSL (Sri Lanka), FIKI (Indonesia), TMI and MOPH health-IT leaders were able to undergo
training on IT Governance (COBIT5 Foundation and Implementation) with support from
WHO, AeHIN (Asia eHealth Information Network), and NORAD.
For more information, please contact APAMI Secretary A/Prof Klaus Veil at Secretary@
APAMI.org
