Dear Colleague,
As we head into summer, it is my honor to report to you on the state of AMIA and our progress along several important dimensions. We have much positive momentum to celebrate.
A Highly Successful AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference
With an outstanding program and attracting more than 750 attendees, the AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference (CIC) in Minneapolis last month was a tremendous success. These three days were dedicated to turning innovation into practice-ready solutions making real world and immediate impact. Colleagues attended from across 45 states and multiple countries including Armenia, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, South Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand, and the UK. Thank you again to the CIC conference leadership including Program Committee chairs Karen Dunn-Lopez, PhD, RN and Rebecca Grochow Mishuris, MD, MS, MPH, the dedicated Scientific Program Committee, AMIA member volunteers, AMIA staff, and our sponsors
Among CIC’s milestones were inducting the Fellows of AMIA (FAMIA) class of 2024, hosting several AMIA Working Groups (including the newest, Climate, Health and Informatics), and furthering critical work on reducing documentation burden on health professionals (see note below). Focusing on the intersection of AI and design, CIC’s opening keynote speakers YC Sun and Jenna Fizel from IDEO said “It’s all of our responsibility to engage deeply with AI tools, and bring along our colleagues and the public, helping them be an active part of building our shared future.” This year’s CIC meeting also featured a health system’s track and sessions on innovation in driving digital equity, AI improving clinician wellbeing and care outcomes, industry and commercial partnership, and leadership and governance.
Mark your calendar for May 20-22, 2025, for the next AMIA CIC in Anaheim, CA.
Open Nominations for AMIA Board of Directors and Board-Chair Elect
Consider nominating yourself for AMIA Board of Directors. We are seeking a new Board Chair-Elect and three Board Directors. Nominations are open through Friday July 12, 2024. Learn more about the process for AMIA board election and nominations.
Advocating to Reduce Documentation Burden
At AMIA CIC in Minneapolis, we released the results of the AMIA 25x5 Taskforce’s first-ever TrendBurden Pulse Survey from April 10-30, 2024. This survey received 1,253 responses from healthcare professionals across 49 states and the District of Columbia demonstrating these key findings:
- Significant concerns regarding documentation time and effort with 77.42% of respondents reported finishing work later than desired or needing to work at home due to excessive documentation tasks.
- When asked about recent changes in documentation burden, most respondents (66.64%) disagreed that there had been a recent decrease in the time or effort needed to complete documentation tasks, with physicians (74.2%) reporting this more than nurses (60.8%).
- 74.38% of respondents agreeing that the time required for documentation impedes patient care.
- Only 31.76% of all respondents (21.9% physicians, 38% nurses) agree or strongly agree that documenting patient care using electronic health records is easy.
We look forward to seeing results of the upcoming early fall 2024 TrendBurden Survey.
Continued Federal Policy Efforts to Recognize Clinical Informatics in Employment Statistics
Among AMIA’s important advocacy and policy efforts, the critically important task of garnering Federal recognition of clinical informatics for employment statistics continues. Clinical informatics is not currently well captured within standard employment taxonomies, such as the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) codes taxonomy maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), or the occupation taxonomies maintained by Census or O*NET. Governmental systems such as SOC codes officially recognizing and documenting the clinical informatics workforce will allow for more understanding of the growth in this industry and properly gauge salaries for this profession. You may remember that AMIA had several wins in this space in 2023, including but not limited to working directly with the Department of Labor on relevant O*NET codes and engaging 42 stakeholders to support our application for a “Clinical Informatics” code.
Recently, we performed an environmental scan of clinical informatics by working with a third-party vendor, Lightcast, to capture and detail the clinical informatics field, including job titles, job descriptions, relevant certification, and degree names, and typically required education and experience levels, among other information. Lightcast used the information provided by AMIA to create search terms to identify demand for clinical informatics professionals as expressed in job postings. Lightcast then mined a comprehensive database of millions of job postings nationally between 2017 and 2023 to understand the demand for clinical informatics. The survey demonstrated an increase in clinical informatics job postings and the need for clearer clinical informatics occupational codes. In particular, there was sparse data on the clinical informatics occupation outside of the new codes that AMIA has provided, demonstrating the importance of these suggested changes to adequately capture the growth and impact of clinical informatics in advancing medicine.
Learn more about AMIA’s Occupational Code work.
Expanding the First Look Program
Building on the efforts of the DEI committee and Women in AMIA committee, AMIA’s First Look Program Leadership and others, AMIA’s First Look program will expand in several important ways. This will include a new AMIA organizational commitment to extend support for the program, expanding eligibility, and increase capacity and associated programming for the newer First Look for Faculty program (a collaboration between DEI-WIA and the Academic Forum). We continue to boost First Look’s efforts exposing undergraduate students to informatics, and outreach to additional students and faculty including those from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges.
Accessible Educational Content
Beginning this year, AMIA will capture live education at AMIA’s meetings for use in AMIA’s Learning Management System (LMS), making it available to those who do not attend in-person and who miss sessions due to busy schedules, and to make education available to learners at times convenient to them. This model will allow AMIA to create learner-centric, online education including tracks and other personalized learning in a variety of formats.
AMIA will also enhance its curricular framework from which additional learner-centric CPD/CE education can be developed as part of a longer-term educational development strategy. The curriculum framework will also allow us to determine what type of education AMIA is uniquely positioned to offer, introduce program-level assessments, facilitate tracks to meet all member needs, and respond to market changes.
Thank you for your membership and your commitment to our mission. AMIA Board Members including myself welcome your questions, comments, and feedback.
Yours sincerely,
Genevieve Melton-Meaux, MD, PhD, FACMI
AMIA President and Board Chair
Professor of Surgery and Health Informatics
Senior Associate Dean, Health Informatics and Data Science
Director, Center for Learning Health System Sciences
University of Minnesota
Chief Analytics and Care Innovation Officer, M Health Fairview