e-News April 28, 2011

April 28, 2011

April 2011 VOL 3 ISSUE 17


AMIA Education/Events Free Phone-in Meeting, Upcoming JAMIA to Focus on PHI STC Hosts “Lunch-and-Learn” at PHI 2011 Last Chance to Register for OHSU 10x10	Policy & Government Affairs White House Releases National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace NLM Launches Software Development Challenge VA Announces Launch of Rural Health Pilot Project IOM to Release Report on Learning Health System NIST Workshop on Usability of EHRs Calendar	Member News Access to JAMIA Streamlined Call for White Papers: NIH Workshop on mHealth

Free Phone-in Meeting, Upcoming JAMIA to Focus on PHI

AMIA’s upcoming conference on public health informatics, PHI 2011, May 25-27, in Orlando, is a consensus meeting of public health professionals who will help set the next informatics agenda in public health. A series of breakout sessions to be held during the conference, will each be dedicated to one of five subject tracks; each will culminate with summary recommendations on May 27. Following the meeting, the entire set of recommendations will be compiled into a white paper to be published in JAMIA later this year. To see the complete PHI 2011 two-and-a-half-day agenda, click here.

On Wednesday, May 4, at 2 p.m. ET, the five PHI 2011 track chairs will join Scientific Program Committee Chair Barbara Massoudi to preview the issues and topics that will be examined in the breakout sessions of the upcoming meeting. Join them in a free phone-in teleconference that will provide short overviews on each track and plenty of time for questions and answers with the track leaders: Ethics led by Ken Goodman, PhD, University of Miami; Technical Frameworks led by Lisa Lang, MPP, National Library of Medicine; Research and Evaluation led by Anne Turner, MD, MPH, University of Washington; Sustainability led by David Potenziani, PhD, University of North Carolina; and Professional Training and Workforce Development led by Janise Richards, PhD, MPH, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Call in at 877-864-2828; passcode 686612.

JAMIA Editor-in-chief Lucila Ohno-Machado will be onsite at PHI 2011, observing the development of the white paper. “The recommendations from PHI 2011 will form an important directive for public health,” says Ohno-Machado. “JAMIA is fortunate to be in the right place at the right time—able to publish the PHI 2011 recommendations and to draw wide attention to them from a variety of communities.”

A limited number of stipends are still available for full-time public health professionals who meet certain criteria and with to attend this highly relevant and critical meeting. For more information, click here.

STC Hosts “Lunch-and-Learn” at PHI 2011

Scientific Technologies Corporation (STC) will host an educational Lunch-and-Learn presentation at PHI 2011. Please plan on joining STC subject-matter experts on Wed., May 25 to learn more about their ground-breaking surveillance programs. To view the PHI 2011 schedule, click here.

About STC: Headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., STC is a leading company in public health informatics and IT solutions supporting local, state, national and global public health practice, with emphasis on immunization registry and information exchange, disease surveillance and management systems, health information technology (HIT), and Medicaid management. STC has provided public health and technical services for 35 state health departments and multiple major U.S. cities.

Last Chance to Register for OHSU 10x10

There is still space available for the OHSU 10x10 course that began on April 27. This course aims to provide a detailed overview of biomedical and health informatics to those who will work at the interface of healthcare and information technology (IT). It provides a broad understanding of the field from the vantage point of those who implement, lead, and develop IT solutions for improving health, healthcare, public health, and biomedical research.

AMIA is pleased to add to its schedule of courses, University of Minnesota School of Nursing’s tenth 10x10 course. Course begins July 11, registration is now open.

Also available for registration with only a few weeks left:

10x10 with Nova Southeastern University—registration deadline May 10, course begins May 16
10x10 with University of Illinois Chicago—registration deadline May 6, course begins May 27
10x10 with Stanford University—course begins June 21
10x10 with OHSU in conjunction with the American College of Emergency Physicians—registration deadline and course begins, June 29

Please visit www.amia.org/e-learning to register for any of these courses and to view full course descriptions.

White House Releases National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

The Obama Administration recently released the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), a strategy aimed at strengthening consumer protections from fraud and identity theft while also enhancing online privacy and fostering economic growth by enabling industry to create innovative new services. The report notes that "individuals and businesses need to be able to check each other’s identity for certain types of sensitive transactions, such as online banking or accessing electronic health records." To read the news release, click here and to read the full report click here.

NLM Launches Software Development Challenge

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) recently launched a new software development challenge, "Show Off Your Apps: Innovative Uses of NLM Information." The challenge furthers the library's mission of supporting the dissemination and exchange of biomedical information in pursuit of scientific discovery, enhancing clinical care, and improving public health. The goal is to encourage the creation of innovative software applications that use the library's collection of biomedical data, including downloadable data sets, application programming interfaces, and other software tools; all of which are free and available for public use. The contest is open to individuals, teams, and organizations in the United States, and submissions may be any kind of software application (e.g., for the Web, PC, handheld device, console, or any platform broadly accessible on the open Internet). For more information, click here.

VA Announces Launch of Rural Health Pilot Project

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced the July launch of a pilot project involving the exchange of veterans’ health records between its medical center and private healthcare providers in rural southeastern Utah. The test will be among 11 other pilots using the VA’s Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record to share information with participating local health practitioners. VA's ultimate goal is to provide Veterans with continuity of care so that no matter where they are treated, their health care providers will have access to the patient’s latest information. For more information, click here.

IOM to Release Report on Learning Health System

On May 23, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) will release and host discussion of a new report titled, "Digital Infrastructure for the Learning Health System: The Foundation for Continuous Improvement in Health and Health Care." The event will include a brief overview of the report's key points, as well as a perspective from the sponsor, the Office of the National Coordinator, and a discussion of priorities and opportunities for progress. For more information, click here.

NIST Workshop on Usability of EHR

Registration has opened for "Measuring, Evaluating and Improving the Usability of Electronic Health Records," a workshop being convened by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The workshop will occur on Tues., June 7, and is meant to be an open forum for stakeholders to discuss and provide technical feedback toward the development of EHR usability evaluation methods. The sessions will be a combination of presentations, panels, and highly interactive small group discussions. For more information, click here.

Access to JAMIA Streamlined

Members can directly access full content of JAMIA online by logging onto the JAMIA website. The goal is to make your access to JAMIA content as seamless as possible, so that when you access JAMIA articles through third party websites such as PubMed, you will not need to go back to AMIA.org to log in. Access to JAMIA will also be available through the “My Information” page of MyAMIA.org. This change simply offers an additional way for members to access JAMIA content easier.

To log in to your profile, visit the JAMIA website. In the upper right-hand corner, enter the following information:

User name: your email address (the one at which you received this email)
Password: currently set to password (you can change this later)

If you have any questions about this change, please contact mail@amia.org.

Call for White Papers: NIH Workshop on mHealth

In collaboration with National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, McKesson Foundation, and National Science Foundation have released a call for white papers to be featured at the Workshop on mHealth Evidence, August 2011. The meeting will bring together individuals with diverse expertise in data analysis and experimental design to identify innovative methods that can accelerate the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of mHealth (mobile health) technologies. Results from the workshop will be used to define the research agenda for evaluation of mHealth technology.

White papers should focus on alternative test designs to the traditional Randomized Control Trial that could be applied to mHealth intervention research or on techniques for analyzing the rich longitudinal data sets that can be obtained from mHealth technologies. Submission deadline is May 27.

For more information about paper submissions and the meeting, click here.