AMIA is making its mark on health care! AMIA members are creating the technology, applications, policies, and organizations that form the informatics infrastructure for delivering safe, effective health care in the new century.

Dr. David Bates, chair of the AMIA 2 006 Scientific Program Committee, has produced an exciting and stimulating program that will probe the depths of clinical, biomedical, and public health informatics. This Symposium brings together practitioners, scientists, academic leaders, developers, industry professionals, and public policy advocates. The networking opportunities are outstanding.

Earlier this year, I formed four task forces to focus AMIA’s energies on areas of importance to its members and the field. Among the activities of the Professional Home task force is to develop a core curriculum for clinical informatics as a basis for professional certification. The Educational Outreach task force is leveraging the highly successful AMIA 10x10 program to expand the reach of our educational programs to the point of need. The Corporate Partnerships task force is exploring mechanisms for AMIA and the HIT industry to collaborate in areas of mutual interest. This year, we held a working conference with industry to develop an understanding of the policy implications regarding secondary use of clinical data from electronic health record systems. And, finally, the Knowledge Management task force is identifying ways to create, maintain, and deliver executable knowledge to systems at the point of care. AMIA published a white paper on clinical decision support with recommendations for next steps in managing decision-support knowledge.

We are excited about the “new” AMIA – an organization at the forefront of science, technology, research, implementation, and policy development. In short, AMIA is the premier professional organization for biomedical and health informatics professionals. We welcome you to the Fall Symposium, our signature educational forum and annual meeting.

Don’t miss this year’s State of the Association Session being held on Tuesday, November 14th. The State of the Association session will now be serving as AMIA’s general membership meeting and has been reworked to include more detailed information of our 10x10 educational program, public policy, and our efforts to transform health care in the areas of clinical informatics, public health informatics, and translational bioinformatics.

I look forward to welcoming you back to AMIA’s Annual Symposium in Washington, DC this November.