Challenges in Medical Informatics: Perspectives of an International Medical Informatics Organization

Objective: As an international organization with the missions to promote informatics in health care and biomedical research, advance international cooperation, stimulate research, development and education, and disseminate and exchange information, the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) must be constantly cognizant of new developments in medical informatics and address the challenges to the discipline. From an international organization standpoint, it perceives three major challenges viz. the Identity, Organizational and Leadership challenges. Method: This paper attempts to identify and discuss these challenges and to offer ways to overcome them through the activities of an international organization for medical informatics. Results and Conclusion: From an international organization standpoint, IMIA can help overcome these organizational challenges by ensuring strong leadership throughout its echelon, actively promoting its goals and objectives worldwide through its national and institutional members as well as its regional groups and encouraging strategic partnerships between its many Working Groups and Special Interest Group on Nursing with other international organizations and industry to further promote the awareness and the perception of the relevance of medical informatics to health and medicine by the international community.