2008-2009 Mid-Year Report

Goal 1: Recruitment, Membership and Leadership in the Profession
Janis Brown, Immediate Past Chair, worked with the MIS Nominating Committee (including Susan Lessick and Lisa Traditi), to identify one candidate for the Chair-elect position and two for the office of Secretary/Treasurer. Elections will be held through Qualtrics (a web-based survey tool licensed by Janis's institution) beginning in early January. In an effort to improve awareness of the section, MIS participated in and contributed $200 towards the Section Shuffle event at the MLA 2008 conference. The MIS also awarded an iPod Nano to the winner (selected by lottery) of its Section Shuffle technology quiz contest, designed to elicit contact information from potential new members. The member interest survey conducted using SurveyMonkey by Janis Brown during her term as Chair, was utilized to identify members for this year's Section committees. Laura Barrett, Chair, and Marie Ascher, Membership Committee Chair, spoke and distributed information about both MLA Section and AHIP membership at the New York/New Jersey Chapter, MLA Fall Meeting held November 6, 2008 at the NYU Medical Center.

Goal 2: Life Long Learning
Colleen Cuddy, Chair-elect, has arranged for the MIS Section to sponsor two programs and co-sponsor a third at the 2009 MLA Annual Meeting in Hawaii. With Top Tech Trends III: Technology Fusion, co-sponsored by the Educational Media and Technologies Section, this popular program returns for its third year with technology trend spotters in health sciences libraries offering their latest insights, opinions, and criticisms on where technology is leading us next. In a related effort, Eric Schnell continues to maintain a Facebook group for MLA Technology Trends <http://usc.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2464357736> to support a collaborative exchange among those interested in the field; the group currently has 195 members. Being an Informationist, or, Why Are You Working in the Library, is a contributed papers session being co-sponsored by the Molecular Biology and Genomics SIG; four contributed papers have been chosen to represent the breadth of the informationist role in the context of medical libraries. The Educational Media and Technologies Section is the sponsor of the program Resources for Disaster and Remote Access Regions, a contributed papers session being co-sponsored by the MIS. This program is about providing information resources in times of disaster and identifying innovative approaches to information delivery in remote geographic regions.

Goal 3: Advocacy
In addition to its contributions to other worthy programs such as the Donald A.B. Lindberg Research Fellowship Award, the Section continues to provide funding in the amount of $1,500 per year for the Medical Informatics Section/MLA Career Development Award. The MIS takes an active role in publicizing the award and participating in the selection process. This year, the MIS will also provide on a competitive basis (documented need/value to the Section) three travel grants in the amount of $350 each to attend the 2009 MLA Annual Meeting in Hawaii.

Douglas Varner attended AMIA's Capitol Hill Day on September 11, 2008, as a representative of the Medical Informatics Section of MLA. It was an opportunity for him to advocate with legislators and/or their staff for issues of concern to both MLA and AMIA, such as HIT legislation, informatics research and training, personal health records, clinical decision support and use of health data.

Goal 4: Creating and Communicating our Knowledge
Nic Cecchino, MIS Web master, continues to update and maintain the MIS Web site as an important resource for members and others.

MOTION
This report is informational and requires no action by the Board of directors.

Respectfully submitted,
Laura Barrett, Chair, Medical Informatics Section

Officers & Committee Personnel, 2007-2008
Marie Ascher Bylaws Chair (06/06 - 05/09)
Laura Barrett Chair (06/08 - 05/09)
Jaime Friel Blanck Blog Committee Chair (6/08-5/09)
Janis Brown Immediate Past Chair/
Nominating Committee Chair (06/08 - 05/09)
Nic Cecchino Webmaster (12/03 - 05/09)
Colleen Cuddy Chair-elect/Program Chair (6/08-5/09)
Kathel Dunn Professional Development Liaison/CE Committee Chair (6/08-5/09)
Sadie Honey Membership Committee Co-Chair (06/06 - 05/09)
Kathy Kerdolff Immediate Past Chair/Nominating Committee Chair (06/07 - 05/08)
Jeanette de Richemond Membership Committee Co-Chair (6/08-5/09)
Brenda Seago Government Relations Liaison/Co-Chair (06/04 - 05/09)
Bette Sydelko Secretary/Treasurer (06/07 - 05/09)
Douglas Varner Governmental Relations Liaison/Co-Chair (6/08-5/09)
Elizabeth Whipple Section Council Representative-Elect (06/07 - 05/09)