AMIA president's column: AMIA's corporate relations activities

Abstract

As I discussed in a recent president's column,1 the roots of AMIA's founding and early identity were largely academic, with an emphasis on informatics and computer science research, both basic and applied. Yet, with the passage of time, yesterday's research has evolved into standard approaches and tools. Today's clinical computing products often reflect research that was carried out in academia or other investigational settings 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Similarly, today's research and development work will be reflected in products a decade or so in the future. This observation emphasizes the ongoing importance of basic and applied research, to fill the pipeline with the ideas and methods that will define the systems of tomorrow. With the evolution of the field, AMIA has necessarily evolved as well, and now embraces a much more diverse membership and, accordingly, different member expectations.2 There is a greater emphasis on applied research and practice, health information technology policy, broad workforce development, and the increasingly successful and mature world of commercial health information technology. In this column I would like to focus on AMIA's increasing interactions with the corporate world and our major efforts to identify and nurture synergies at that interface. AMIA, its members, and the biomedical informatics community have much to contribute to industry and much to gain from healthy relationships with the companies that work in diverse …