ACMI 2001 Symposium

"ACMI.com: The 'Business' of Informatics in the 21st Century."
Hilton Torrey Pines Hotel
La Jolla, CA: February 1-4, 2001

As has been the custom in alternating years, ACMI goes west for the 2001 Symposium. The next ACMI Symposium will take place February 1-4, 2001, at the Hilton Torrey Pines Hotel in La Jolla, CA (http://www.hilton.com/hotels/SANTPHH). The meeting is open to ACMI Fellows and International Associates. This spectacular resort will provide a superb setting for the meeting, offering as well a full range of recreational opportunities.

In line with the discussions at ACMI 2000 Symposium in Marco Island, Florida last year, the theme of the upcoming symposium will be "ACMI.com: The 'Business' of Informatics in the 21st Century." The point of departure will be the multiple interrelated trends of which we are all aware: the "dotcoms," consumer health, bioinformatics, mega-health care systems, a new generation of vendor products, start-ups and venture capital, new procedures and policies governing health care, and public health issues. These trends, and others, combine to suggest that the future of medical/health informatics is not a straightforward evolution of the past, and that perhaps an entirely new culture of informatics is rapidly developing. ACMI needs to get ahead of these trends, or at least catch up with them. If the field is going to change, then perhaps ACMI itself needs to change as well. At minimum, the symposium will acknowledge formally, describe crisply, and analyze insightfully the implications of these changes. Where we go beyond that will be up to the group.

To aid us in this task, we will depart from past practice and include in the symposium a small number of non-fellows to provide some novel perspectives and thus stimulate our thinking. The symposium program committee (see below) has identified some excellent persons to invite for this purpose. To date, we have attendance commitments from Dr. Charles (Chuck) Saunders, Chief Medical Officer of WebMD and from Dr. Bruce Hochstadt who covers healthcare information, services, and e-health companies as a Principal at Thomas Wiesel Partners.

The program committee will develop a detailed agenda for the symposium that blends our invited guests into our customary format of presentations amplified by large and small group discussions. We will keep the discussions focused while trying to promote creative thinking. As always, we will have formal sessions in the morning followed by afternoons free for recreation and informal interaction. Because there is so much to address, we may introduce some semi-formal, optional sessions in the late afternoon/early evening.

Can we as ACMI members afford to leave these issues to others? I think not, and hope you will choose to be part of these vital proceedings. As has been our custom, because the format of the symposium requires a fairly intimate group, we plan to limit registration to 45 fellows.

Registration materials have been mailed to all current ACMI Fellows and International Associates. You will see that we have negotiated room rates and developed a fee structure quite comparable with those of last year's symposium. If you plan to attend, please return your reservation as soon as possible to ensure your place. If you have suggestions about the program, please contact me via mail to cpf@cbmi.upmc.edu.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Charles P. Friedman, PhD
President-Elect, American College of Medical Informatics

Symposium Planning Committee:
Russ Altman Bill Hersh Judy Ozbolt Dean Sittig	Patti Brennan Zak Kohane David Pryor Bill Stead	Chuck Friedman Dan Masys Charlie Safran