Remarks from Incoming Board Chair

I am honored to assume the role of Board Chair for AMIA for a 2-year term starting January 1, 2012. I would like to use this column to give you an overview of the strategies that are setting the directions for AMIA.

Before starting the core of this document, I have a couple of notes. First, I would like to acknowledge the terrific work of my predecessor, outgoing AMIA Board Chair Nancy Lorenzi. During her term, Nancy made AMIA a much more effective and efficient organization. Nancy led a refinement of AMIA's strategic plan,1 which put the organization on a firm forward-looking path. She addressed long standing needs at AMIA, including a revision of the bylaws and the committee structure, as well as the development of a Conflict of Interest policy. She also chartered and brought to completion several key task forces including ones that examined AMIA's (1) approach to conferences, (2) international strategy, (3) proceedings archive approach, and (4) publications endorsement policy. As Chair-elect for the past year, it has been my pleasure to work closely with, and learn from, Nancy. I thank her on behalf of the entire membership for her strong and steady work over the past 2 years.

Second, I would like to acknowledge Ted Shortliffe for his superb service as AMIA President and CEO. In early November (immediately prior to this writing) Ted announced his decision to resign from AMIA at some point in 2012. Ted took over the leadership of AMIA in mid-2009. Having Ted at the helm has been truly a gift for AMIA. Ted brought to the role the perspectives of over 4 decades of informatics experience, much of it in leadership positions and spanning research, clinical, and administrative activities. Ted was one of the founders of AMIA and he has served in many leadership roles previously at the organization. Ted had several important accomplishments during his tenure as CEO and President including: an important advancement of the corporate membership program, an advancement of the marketing and communications program, the formalization of the clinical subspecialty certification process for Clinical Informatics, and the substantial growth of the translational bioinformatics and clinical research informatics ‘Summits’ meetings. We are saddened to be losing Ted as the leader of AMIA. We certainly wish him well in his next ventures and look forward to his continued participation in AMIA.

AMIA is the home for informatics professionals. It is an association of over 4000 individual, corporate, and institutional members. AMIA's mission is to advance the transformation of health and healthcare through leadership in the trusted science, education, and practice of informatics.

AMIA serves as a bridge for knowledge and collaboration across a multitude of stakeholders, including:

• Innovative healthcare providers, who are developing IT-enabled approaches to care improvement.
• Members of the research community, who are discovering new knowledge in a variety of domains and are creating a scientific basis for future directions.
• Industry, which is working to assure that beneficial technologies can reach the market place and be adopted and supported effectively.
• Federal and state governments, who are creating the framework for interoperable electronic health records and assuring that the requisite workforce is in place.
• The public health community, which is working to assure that benefits are realized by populations and not just one patient at a time, and that the needs of the consumer are taken into account.
• Other professional organizations, which AMIA can work with synergistically to achieve its goals.

The AMIA strategic framework is built on four ‘pillars’: (1) providing informatics leadership, (2) serving AMIA's members, (3) advancing informatics science and education, and (4) assuring organizational strength and growth. This framework, which was developed under Nancy Lorenzi's leadership, was recently updated to include the following:

1. Providing informatics leadership

1. AMIA will be viewed as the leader in informatics, inside and outside of healthcare.
2. AMIA will provide leading educational and scientific activities with the goal of advancing the state of the art of informatics.
3. AMIA will have an active policy program to assure that the benefit of informatics can reach the greatest number of people.
4. AMIA will identify educational and workforce needs for informatics and will work to address those needs.
5. AMIA will promote the profession of informatics and will advance the concept of professional certification.
6. AMIA will use scientific and other mechanisms to communicate with the health, information technology, and policy communities about its work and achievements.

2. Serving AMIA's members

1. AMIA will provide the best forums for its members for (1) networking, (2) education, (3) professional and scientific interaction, and (4) discourse about important informatics policy issues.
2. AMIA will work to understand the needs, interests, and goals of its corporate members and assure that it has programs in place to address them.
3. AMIA will support a communication framework to assure that the organization can interact effectively with its members, and that its members can interact effectively with each other.
4. AMIA will identify topics of high interest to its members and keep its members up to date on these topics.

3. Advancing informatics science and education

1. AMIA will identify the content and the delivery modalities for the scientific and educational offerings that would be of greatest value to the informatics community.
2. Given the dynamic state of both informatics and educational modalities, AMIA will seek to be innovative. It will experiment frequently, keeping what works and retiring what doesn't.
3. AMIA recognizes that all levels of the informatics workforce are growing rapidly. AMIA will identify the segments of the informatics workforce for whom it can address educational needs and develop programs to meet those needs.
4. AMIA will support the mission of its journal, J Am Med Inform Assoc, to continue to be the premier informatics journal.

4. Assuring organizational strength and growth

1. AMIA will seek to have a stable and growing financial model. b.
2. As the field of informatics grows, AMIA will seek to increase its membership. AMIA will identify and actively pursue new segments of the biomedical community that could find value from AMIA membership.
3. AMIA will review its conference offerings and evolve them to make them attractive to as many people as possible. d.
4. AMIA will seek to develop offerings that are more explicitly educational (eg, practical, ‘how-to,’ etc) to complement its more traditional scientific offerings.
5. AMIA will pursue partnerships with other organizations to achieve its goals.
6. AMIA will run an effective and efficient office staffed by enthusiastic people who understand and are motivated to pursue key organizational goals.

Over the coming months, the AMIA staff and the Board will expand AMIA's activities in alignment with these directions. In a future column, I'll look forward to updating you on the specific initiatives that AMIA is undertaking to advance these goals.

I look forward to the next 2 years. I thank you for your interest in informatics and for your support of AMIA.

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