APAMI

APAMI Membership

APAMI's current, active member societies include the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA), the Hong Kong Society of Medical Informatics (HKSMI), the Indian Association for Medical Informatics (IAMI), the Japan Association for Medical Informatics (JAMI), the Korean Society of Medical Informatics (KOSMI), the Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ), the Philippine Medical Informatics Society (PMIS), the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka (HISSL), the Association for Medical & Bioinformatics Singapore (AMBIS), the Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics (TAMI), and the Thai Medical Informatics Association (TMIA).

APAMI Executive

The current APAMI leadership consists of: President: Vajira H. W. Dissanayake [[e-mail]]; Immediate Past President: Kyunghee Cho [[e-mail]]; Secretary: Oommen John [[e-mail]]; Treasurer: CP Wong [[e-mail]], Directors: S B Gogia [[e-mail]], Klaus D Veil [[e-mail]]

APAMI Website

APAMI launched a new website: http://www.apami.online

APAMI Participation in Conferences

MedInfo 2019, Lyon, France

APAMI conducted a symposium entitled “4th Industrial Revolution in medical care in Asia Pacific region” at Medinfo 2019 on 29 August 2019 : They were Shabbir Syed-Abdula who spoke on “Cancer risk prediction model at Taipei Medical University (TMU), Taiwan”; Sang-Heo Lee who spoke on “Precision Medicine Hospital Information System at Korea University”; Dongsheng Zhao who spoke on “Tencent Internet Plus Smart Health Cloud” and CP Wong who spoke on “Filmless Operating Theatres Project for the Hospital Authority (HA) of Hong Kong”. The symposium was chaired by Prof. Vajira H. W. Dissanayake and Dr. KH Cho. A lively panel discussion followed the talks and the panel included the speakers and Prof Jack Li.

APAMI and Taipei Medical University College of Nursing Joint International Conference

APAMI and Taipei Medical University College of Nursing Joint International Conference on Application of big data and artificial intelligence in Nursing and Health Care was held on 17 and 18 September 2019 at the Taipei Medical University. It was attended by over 300 participants. Prof. Vajira H. W. Dissanayake and Prof. Jack Li represented APAMI.

APAMI General Assembly

The APAMI general assembly was held on 28 August 2019 during MedInfo 2019. All member societies were represented at the meeting. In addition, the corresponding member from Indonesia as well as representatives from the Institutional Member from China, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China were in attendance. The members deliberated on the activities of APAMI and APAMI 2020 was awarded to Japan.

Reports of APAMI Member Societies

Health Informatics Society of Australia

2019 was a big year for health informatics ‘down under’. Over two years ago, the Board of the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) and the Council of the Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI) began strategic discussions focused on how they could work more closely together to best support their members, grow their membership base and their influence and provide leadership to a health sector undergoing rapid transformation. Those conversations led to an agreement to recommend to our Fellows and members that the two bodies come together to form a new peak professional body for health informatics and digital health. In May-June 2019, an eight-week consultation period was conducted across both organisations. A survey was the main consultation tool, the results of which were used by the HISA Board and ACHI Council to assess members’ and Fellows’ interest in pursuing a formal vote. The results were overwhelmingly positive to proceed with a vote. A formal vote of HISA and ACHI members was conducted in December 2019. Our members spoke loudly and clearly, with more than 89% of HISA members and ACHI Fellows and members voting in favour of the proposal to unite and launch a new organisation. The Australasian Institute of Digital Health will officially launch on 24 February 2020.

At the time of writing this report, the strategy for the Institute was in development by the Board and CEO. The Institute will cater for the broad digital health community of health informaticians, clinicians, Fellows, executives, students, researchers, technologists, industry and healthcare organisations. All ACHI Fellows and Members and HISA members will be invited in February to join the newly formed organisation. The activities and programs of the Institute will be to continue the work of HISA and ACHI, as well as develop new initiatives of benefit to our members and the wider digital health community. We will continue to work collaboratively with our neighbouring countries on programs that help support the growth of informatics in our region.

Building workforce capability in digital health, along with pathways to Fellowship, will be a key focus for the Institute. In Australia, the health workforce is rapidly embracing digital health and health informatics. The demand for education, training, professional pathways, certification and leadership development is growing and we aim to meet that demand. There is a commitment to education and training; accreditation and certification; support for students and young leaders; communities of practice; executive leadership networks; and advocacy for digital health.

While it was literally hundreds of people who decided to make the Australasian Institute of Digital Health a reality, special thanks go to the following people: AIDH Chair - Michael Walsh. AIDH Board Members - Dr Jen Bichel-Findlay, Dr Kerryn Butler-Henderson, Leigh Donoghue, Dr David Hansen (immediate past Chair HISA), Dr Inga Hunter, David Rowlands, Angela Ryan President ACHI), and Peter Williams. ACHI and HISA Board members - Dr Chris Pearce (immediate past President ACHI) and Phil Robinson (ex HISA Treasurer and governance guru). Staff who did an amazing job pulling this all together– Dr Louise Schaper, CEO and Heather Hunt, Communications Director

At the time this .annual report is published, the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) will be the member society of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). The website of AIDH is www.digitalhealth.org.au.

Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka

The Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka saw a change in its leadership this year with Dr. Rohana Marasinghe taking over as President. The Society continued its main roles of supporting the University of Colombo to conduct its MSc in Biomedical Informatics and MD in Health Informatics courses. The 8th batch of MSc qualified graduates and the first batch of MD qualified Health Informaticians graduated in 2019.

A key development in the country in 2019 was the proposed new Data Protection Act. The Society was instrumental in provided vital inputs to the act as well as facilitating public deliberation.

The Society is further supporting the World Health Organizations Digital Health Atlas Project in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka; supporting the CDC Foundation and the Ministry of Health in implementing the NCD mobile phone survey in Sri Lanka; and supporting the Bloomberg/Vital Strategies funded Medical Certification of Cause of Death Programme in Sri Lanka. The Society also partners with the Asia eHealth Information Network on many of its initiatives.

The Society continued to support the activities of the Commonwealth Center for Digital Health (CWCDH) as its main technical partner and contributed to the establishment of the UK hub of the CWCDH in the University of Southampton, UK in June 2019.

The annual conference of the Society – Digital Health Sri Lanka 2019 – was held on 17 and 18 October 2019 on the theme “Towards an electronic health record for every Sri Lankan”. The conference consisted of 7 symposia and 2 workshops. The highlight of the conference was the keynote at the inauguration which was delivered by Prof. Vajira H. W. Dissanayake, the outgoing President and its Founder Secretary General, who spoke on “HISSL into the third decade” where he spoke of how the Society, from its humble beginnings in 1998, evolved into an organization playing strong national, regional and global roles. There were 40 invited speakers and 22 oral presentations at the conference with over 200 participants. Apart from the traditional oral presentations, a new form of presentation, a 3-minute pulse presentation, was introduced this year. The best oral presentation as well as the best pulse presentation were given awards. The abstracts were published in the Sri Lanka Journal of Biomedical Informatics (https://sljbmi.sljol.info/). The conference concluded with the establishment of the Sri Lanka Connected Health Alliance – an umbrella organization of healthcare and digital health care solution providers – under the Society.

Hong Kong Society of Medical Informatics

The Hong Kong Society of Medical Informatics continued to support the Government in rolling out the territory-wide Electronic Health Records Sharing System for all Hong Kong Citizens both in the public and private sectors. A total of more than 1 million have already enrolled. All public institutions are engaged, and most major private large medical institutes and hospitals are also in the bandwagon. We continue to go into Phase II of the Sharing System in preparing for image sharing, Chinese medicine and also patient portal projects.

Our major event in 2019 was the Asia Pacific Electronic Health Records Conference held in October. This event was held in conjunction with the WHO Global Digital Health Partnership summit meeting in Hong Kong. A total of more than 40 GDHP delegates attended both the summits and our Conference, which was packed with more than 600 delegates, and was held in great success.

Korean Society of Medical Informatics

As of December 31, 2019, KOSMI has more than 8357 different types of members consisting of 226 life time members, 496 full members, 115 student members, 6922 Web members, and 6 institute members. KOSMI is organizing 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 Korea University Medical Center in Seoul from July 11 to July 12. The theme of the conference was “One Patient, One Record” and 820 members participated in the conference. There were 3 tutorials, 19 symposiums, 18 paper presentations, and 48 poster presentations. Four papers and one poster were awarded and recognized as the best papers and poster respectively at the conference. The fall conference was held at Kyungpook National University Hospital from November 8 to November 9. Keynote speakers are Trish Williams from Flinders University and Vincent McCauley from Telstra Health, Australia. Totally, 550 members participated in the conference. There were 4 tutorials, 19 symposiums, 30 paper presentations, and 30 poster presentations. Six papers and three posters were awarded and recognized as the best papers and poster respectively at the conference.

KOSMI published 25th volume of the Health Information Research (HIR) in 2019. The HIR publishes four issues in English including 4 editorials, 4 review articles, 28 original research articles, 5 case report, 2 Tutorials and 1 communications. The Journal was accredited by the Korea Research Foundation in 2006 and registered as one of prestigious academic journals in Korea.

Philippine Medical Informatics Society

The PMIS in collaboration with the Medical Informatics Unit of the University of the Philippines Manila organized an EHR Summit at the Philippine Heart Center, November 9, 2019. Attended by more than 150 participants, the Summit brought together representatives from the government, academe, and private sector to discuss current issues with health information technology and agree on shared next steps. Prominent in the discussions was the recent problems encountered with Claims Form 4 (CF4) of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation. Other insights shared were the roles of health professionals in electronic clinical documentation. The usual queries on privacy and security also re-emerged. In the end, all participants were in agreement that there will be “no universal health coverage without an EHR” realizing that the portability and centricity of the patient-record are core to the success of the new law.

The PMIS remains anchored to the University of the Philippines Manila with faculty and students of the masters of science in health informatics forming the core group that facilitated the Summit.