Medical Informatics Section Annual Report 2000/2001 (Draft)

Goal 1. Professional development

Objective 1. Sponsored programs. The Medical Informatics Section (MIS) is sponsoring two sessions for the annual meeting in May 2001 including:

1. "Core competencies for librarians in informatics-intensive environments,," a combined invited/contributed paper session with co-sponsorship from Public Health/Health Administration, Leadership and Management, and the Medical Library Education sections. Invited speaker Jocelyn Rankin, Ph.D., AHIP, Chief, CDC Information Center, will present a paper co-authored with P. Zoe Stavri, Ph.D., on "Discovering information vectors for public health: New roles for information professionals." Contributed papers will cover various aspects of informatics in librarianship, including decision analysis, interdisciplinary teams, and informatics education;
2. "Education outside the classroom 1: Library roles in distance learning," co-sponsored by the Educational Media and Technology (EMTS) section. Contributed papers range from a doctoral course in health informatics delivered over distance to the use the videoconferencing to connect hospital libraries to their affiliated academic institutions.

MIS is also co-sponsoring three other sessions at the 2001 annual conference including:

1. The EMTS-sponsored sister session "Education outside the classroom 2: Decision support and information systems training in clinical settings;"
2. The EMTS-sponsored session focusing on collaborative teams and strategies for technology implementation and support;
3. The History of the Health Sciences session entitled "IAIMS, then and now: The Informatics Odyssey." Invited speakers to the last session include Wayne Peay and Rachel Anderson who will speak on the early IAIMS projects and Valerie Florance will discuss The Next Generation. Two contributed papers will discuss current projects.

Objective 2. Pre-conference symposium. With the EMTS, Hospital Libraries sections and the Internet SIG, MIS will co-sponsor the pre-conference symposium entitled: "Leveraging the web: Providing innovative health information services." Brenda Seago represented the MIS section.

Objective 3. Co-sponsorship of a journal club. Kris Alpi, representing the Public Health/Health Administration sponsoring section coordinated this successful effort.

Objective 4. Potential technology certification program. MIS explored potential participation of the Section in the Association's effort to establish a technology certification program. To date, the CE committee is taking the lead.

Objective 5. Leadership and programming for the International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML). Scott Plutchak coordinated the sessions for MIS, along with Steve MacCall, Betsy Humphreys, Larry Woods, and Nancy Roderer. Reportedly all went quite well.

The sessions included the following:

1. Librarians and Informatics: Making it Work, held Sunday, July 2, 2000. Presenters included: Gary Byrd, Elizabeth Eaton/ Susan Albright, Eileen H. Stanley, and Joan Ash.
2. Advanced Technologies for Digital Libraries, held Tuesday, July 4, 2000. Presenters included: Jim Duncan/ Dick Eimas, Gillian Goldsmith Mayman, Debra Ketchell/ Emily Hull/ Leilani, St. Anna/ Wei-Laung Hu/ Leo Lai, and Steven MacCall/ Ian Gibson/ Ana Cleveland/ David McMillan/ Russell Kingston.
3. The Visible Human Project: An International Imaging Resource, held Wednesday, July 5, 2000. Speakers included: Michael Ackerman, Francesco Pinciroli/ Robert Hersch/ Andreas Pommert.

Goal 2. Advocacy

Objective 1. Career development awards. Two section-sponsored Career Development awards will be given with winners announced at the annual meeting; Nuncia Guise coordinated the awards as part of the overall MLA awards process.

Objective 2. Explore automated update of new members to the MI web page. Shawn Manning, Membership Chair, and David Yamamoto, Section Web-master, are in the process of adding this to the home page.

Objective 3. Expanding the Self education research project. Kris Alpi coordinated this substantial listing of educational opportunities that are now on the MIS home page.

Goal 6. Information Technology.

David Yamamoto, MIS web-master, continued to enhance and update information via the section's home page to include Powerpoint presentations from the 2000 annual meeting, the self-education resources list, results of the informatics survey, and the new membership brochure.

Submitted by,
Diana Cunningham, Section Chair
3/30/01

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