MLA Medical Informatics Section (MIS)
2004 Annual Business Meeting, Washington, DC
Date: May 23, 2004

Welcome/Introductions.
The meeting was started at 4:05 PM by the Chair of the Section, Jean Sayre. Jean Sayre introduced incoming Chair Beth Layton, Chair-Elect Catherine Arnott Smith, and Denise Britigan who took minutes for Taneya Koonce. Twenty-six members were present, plus one guest. The minutes of the 2003 business meeting were approved as written. Jean decided to give the Chair's report at the end so as not to duplicate the individual reports of the committees.

Secretary/Treasurer's Report. (Taneya Koonce) The report was given in absentia. The balance for the account, as of April 30, is $31, 759.66. There were no questions on the report.

Nominating Committee. Ruth Riley reported the results of the MIS election along with thanks for Janis Brown and Joan Marcotte Gregory for serving on the Nominating Committee. All 68 votes were affirmative for Chair-Elect Catherine Arnott-Smith and Representative-Elect to Section Council Joan Marcotte Gregory. There were no write-in candidates.

Section Council. Pat Friedman gave the Section Council report. Section logo stickers were distributed for the Conference name badges. A list of candidates (applications and their resumes) for the Section Council and the Nominating Committee were circulated. Section committee reports were summarized. This year 59 out of 138 papers were accepted. New models of structured abstracts for papers & posters will be offered next year. Standards for archiving the Section Council materials were distributed. Pat mentioned that due to anti-spam legislation, MLA headquarters needs to get permission to fax items to members. For membership renewals, MLA sends one paper renewal reminder and 2 e-mail reminders. Headquarters wrote various letters of advocacy this year. There will be an MLA teleconference in September, 2004 on the topic of electronic publishing and scholarly communication. There was a question raised regarding whether there was any tracking of how many contributed papers were accepted and how many were submitted over the years at MLA. No one was able to answer the question, but there was general agreement it would be a good things to track.

Programming. Beth Layton gave the report. Clarification was made regarding the moderators for the sessions and the contributed papers/invited speakers sessions.

SUNDAY, MAY 23 - 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m

Educating the 21st Century Health Professional. (MIS is a co-sponsor; the primary sponsor is the Educational Media and Technologies Section) Contributed papers:

• Janet G. Schnall (lead author). Finding measurement tools "any time, any place": an interdisciplinary, self-help Web tutorial
  
  
• Tamara Rader (lead author). Sharing our power: how librarians can contribute to the life-long learning of primary care physicians in the United Kingdom
  
  
• Katherine Schilling (lead author). The impact of online training on information-retrieval skills and clinical decision making in a family medicine clerkship.
  
  
• Nancy J. Allee (lead author). Distributed power, distributed learning: strategies for providing online education for public health professionals in the digital age

Our section supported this session through a contribution for expenses and review of abstracts.

MONDAY, MAY 24 - 3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

Power Partners: What Medical Informatics Can Do for Medical Librarians and What Medical Librarians Can Do for Informatics. (Co-sponsored with the Medical Library Education Section.)
An invited speaker session:

• Charles Friedman. Bioinformatics and Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI): new opportunities to unite health librarians and informatics.
  
  
• Julie McGowan. Two roads diverged: the yellow wood of knowledge informatics
  
  
• Steve Marine. Librarians Deep in the Mix: Two Case Studies at the University of Cincinnati. (Steve filled in for Elizabeth Wood due to illness.)
  
  

For the last portion of the session, we will have a discussion with the panel and the audience. Catherine Arnott Smith is the moderator for this session.

TUESDAY, MAY 25 - 2:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.

Sharing the Power (Part 2): Bioinformatics Education and the Library. (Co-sponsored with the Molecular Biology and Genomics SIG.)
This session consists of contributed papers by Michele Tennant and Barrie E. Hayes and an invited presentation by Renata Geer (which will cover the last 2 portions of the program).

• Michele R. Tennant. A library-based bioinformatics educational program for students, researchers, and clinicians.
  
  
• Barrie E. Hayes (lead author). Building a community of bioinformatics practice through library education programs
  
  
• Renata Geer. Building a national bioinformatics education program for library staff: design, results, and the future" during the last two portions.

Michael Newman is the moderator for this session.

Tuesday at 4:30 a reception hosted by the Medical Informatics Section and the Molecular Biology and Genomics SIG and funded by Wiley, will be held in the Grant Room. Everyone is invited.

Membership Committee. Denise Britigan reported for Mike Kronenfeld. Denise will attend the MLA Membership Committee meeting on Tuesday morning for the section. There are currently 466 members in the MIS. Here is Mike's report for the Membership Committee meeting: "In 2004 the Membership Committee had two major accomplishments. The first was the establishment of an official section business listserv to support the activities of the Section. It is used by the Section Board in support of Section elections and news transmittal. The second accomplishment was the creation and printing of a Section brochure by Membership Committee member Denise Britigan. These will be first distributed to potential Section members at the 2004 Annual meeting in Washington, DC."
Five hundred new brochures have been printed with a new logo/ design. Samples of the brochures were distributed at the business meeting as well as offered at the Section table this year.

Website Editor. Nic Cecchino is the new Webmaster. He showed the attendees two versions of web site designs and asked for feedback. Members were encouraged to contact him with suggestions. Jean Sayre thanked Nic for the new site design and also Scott Fiddleke (Hardin Library) for the new logo. Jean suggested that Nic send the new design to the MedInfo listserv to obtain additional comments from the membership.

Professional Development Liasion Report .Wallace McLendon reported that the "Planning for Emerging Technologies" symposium proposal for 2005 was rejected. Wallace discussed starting a journal club on the same topic. Discussion followed. One suggestion was to create a blog on the MIS website for the journal club. The journal club involves reading 6-12 articles over 6 months. Journal club members must input of at least two responses in order to qualify for 7.5 Academy credits. Wallace asked that members interested in helping him with the club see him after the meeting.

Government Relations Liaison. Nancy Roderer said there was nothing to report. She is willing to stay on in the position, but would be happy to give the position to someone else if they are interested.

Career Development Grants. Jean Sayre reported that the MIS section sponsors two career development grants each year. This year the winners of the $1,500.00 grants are Margaret Gorman, from Tucson, AZ, and Sara Ann Hook, from Indianapolis, IN.

Chair's report. There have been many replacements of officers this year. Zoe Stavri resigned as Chair-elect in August. The Board, acting according to instructions in the bylaws appointed Beth Layton as the new Chair-Elect and Program Chair. Nic Cecchino was appointed Webmaster after Marty Brennan resigned in December. Mike Kronenfeld replaced Shawn Manning for Membership Chair.

Proposed Goals. The new Chair, Beth Layton mentioned improving interactions among members as a goal she would like to pursue. MIS has a new website, and a new logo and is off to a good start. Our listserv could be better utilized. The goals from the new MLA President, Joanne Marshall, were reviewed and it was pointed out that diversity is one of her goals the Section needs to respond to in next year's Section goals. Wallace suggested an idea of incorporating levels of emphasis of technology based on where we work. For example, UNC includes a Glossary for grounding folks in the vocabulary of emerging technologies. Ruth suggested a deep link to that site on our web page. Discussion followed regarding a newsletter or product. Perhaps the web site could be used to stay informed through a news service. A small committee may be formed to explore these ideas.

2005 Program Ideas. Beth suggested forming a group of 5 people or so to work with Catherine Arnott Smith to discuss section programming for 2005. Jean shared that the program format will be different next year. There are 5 themes to incorporate: Education, Outreach, Diversity, Clinical, and Technology. There will be three afternoons during the meeting with 90-minutes of section programming each day. The programs will all be theme-based, and there will be a total of 15 programs presented. The papers or programs will not strictly-timed or formatted as in the past few years. Ideas for MIS programming included a possible survey of membership that would focus on medical informatics competencies and education. One of the survey questions could be about whether a person's education has prepared them for a career in informatics? Another could be focused on what jobs are people taking that use informatics skills? Catherine would like input as to which questions should be incorporated. Beth discussed a possible topic of providing information at point-of- care/ Use of PDAs -- for example. This would fit in well with the Clinical theme. Discussion followed about partnering with the Medical Education section, the Research section, and the Hospital Librarian section.

The Co-Chairs of the 2006 MLA meeting in Phoenix, Jim Shedlock and Debbie Ketchell invited the section members for our ideas to create a different kind of meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Denise H. Britigan, University of Iowa
Secretary Pro-tem

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