1 Membership of IMIA-LAC
To date, 12 medical informatics societies constitute the Federation of Health Informatics for Latin America and Caribbean: Argentina (AAIM, Hospital Italiano), Bolivia (SOBOTIM), Brazil (SBISS), Colombia (ACIESA), Costa Rica (MoH), Chile (ACHISA), Cuba (MoH/SCIM), El Salvador (IMHS), Mexico (AMIM), Peru (SOPTIS), Puerto Rico (SHILAC) and Uruguay (SUIS).
2 IMIA-LAC Board Meetings
The Region is working to consolidate its governance and improve its viability. IMIA-LAC has societies which work on their local objectives, and share with its peers capabilities and experiences. Infolac, the official event of our organization received sponsorship from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) through the Cuban Minister of Health. After many, prolonged negotiations, finally an official proposal from the Cuban Society of Medical Informatics and the Ministry of Health to host Infolac 2018 in March 2018 has been issued and was approved by the IMIA-LAC Board. IMIA-LAC will work with the different regional societies to incentivize academic participation, collaboration with other regions and societies, and to integrate regional working works.
The current IMIA-LAC Board includes:
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President: Dr. Amado Espinosa (AMIM)
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President-elected: Dr. Claudio Giulliano (SBISS)
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Secretary: Dr. Erika Caballero (ACHISA)
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Treasurer: Dr. Carol Hullin (ACHISA)
3 Members’ Activities 2016–2017
Argentina
Sept 6-8, 2016, the Asociación Argentina de Informática Médica (AAIM), the Asociación HL7 Argentina, Sociedad Argentina de Bioingeniería (SABI), and the Sociedad Argentina de Informática (SADIO) hosted the Congress on Health Informatics CAIS 2016. More than 300 people linked to the field of health and technology attended in the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.
In this latest CAIS event, emphasis was given to the newest advances in information technology available to health care organizations that are designed to increase the productivity of the health care team and improve the quality of health care processes.
To fulfill this objective, the various developments and applications of Information Technology (ICTs) were reviewed, which were strengthened by working in an integrated way through interoperability and the adoption of standards that allow the exchange of information between The different applications and systems used in the context of health care organizations.
At the University Institute of the Italian Hospital and the Standards Association, the organizations celebrated their Symposium of ICT in Healthcare where the Department of Health Informatics together with experts from government, hospitals, companies, and associations shared their experiences with each other and international participants. Academic involvement was outstanding and the participation of the medical informatics students was lively.
Brazil
The Brazilian Congress on Health Informatics (CBIS) is the main national event in the area, conducted biennially by the Brazilian Society of Health Informatics (SBIS) since 1986. It promotes the debate of current issues, particularly on resources, devices, and methods to optimize the storage, retrieval, and management of biomedical information in the context of the different scenarios such as Health Information Systems, Electronic Patient Record, Telemedicine, Decision Support Systems, Signal Processing Biological, Medical Image Processing, Internet Health, and Health Information Standardization.
In its 15th edition, the CBIS 2016 was held from November 27 to 30, in Goiânia -Goiás, through a partnership between SBIS and the Federal University of Goiás. The central theme was “Transforming Health “. For this, the event counted on the participation of active actors in the process of construction of the National e-Health to strengthening the National Health Information and Informatics Policy. The meeting constituted an important investment in narrowing the gap between educational institutions and the recognized class entities in several governmental priority areas for health and information technology (IT). Advances in health in an increasingly technological world with a look in the past, present, and future received a special focus during the congress with the challenges in human resource development as a special sub-topic.
Cuba
After the hard, dedicated work from our Cuban colleges, we received the support of the Cuban health authorities to host Infolac 2018 in La Habana, 16-20th April 2018. The conference will be organized together with the Ministry of Public Health, the Cuban Society of Medical Informatics, and the Academy of Informatics. The Pan American Health Organization has already congratulated our colleges in Cuba and offered their support
Mexico
A new collaboration between AMIM and the VP for eHealth from the Industry Chamber of ICT was kicked off with an active agenda of collaboration to support international standards for the electronic medical record, to advance the integration of medical devices projects, and to integrate device data into the ECE formats, and to train professionals from both organizations in the details of the joint domains.
Nursing Informatics Group
The Mexican Medical Informatics Association has been honored to host the organization of NI2018 light Conference in Mexico. The conference will help to foster the further development of the Mexican Chapter of NI with the support of the most important authorities of the healthcare sector. The conference will be held in June 2018 in Guadalajara, Jal.4.
4 IGF
IMIA-LAC was represented during the 10th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, where representatives from different international NGO met to discuss the challenges that the internet adoption means. Healthcare will be one of the sectors with the fastest growth in terms of digital transformation and introduction of the internet to the healthcare services. Academia, government, and industry engaged during this conference in an intensive collaboration to avoid gaps among the economies of the countries represented.
5 Institutional Relationships
After AMIA 2016, a formal process of collaboration among the IMIA-LAC working groups was organized. The AMIA president Doug Fridsma expressed interest in finding areas of collaboration. These areas will be further elaborated during the year together with the members of the region.
A formal meeting to define the agenda with EFMI will be organized in June 2017 during a meeting to prepare the first draft in Mexico.
