European Federation Of Medical Informatics Research Articles

Accreditation on Biomedical and Health Informatics in Europe: Guidelines and Procedures.

Accreditation is the evaluation and monitoring process assuring that educational programs and institutions meet academic standards and operational integrity and quality. The number of programs in the field of Biomedical and Health Informatics is rapidly increasing. In this paper we briefly introduce the accreditation procedure that has been established by Accreditation Committee (AC2) of European Federation of Medical Informatics according to international standards.

First Accreditation of a Medical Informatics Program by the European Federation of Medical Informatics: Experiences.

European universities offer a variety of programs in Medical Informatics. The Europen Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) offers accreditation of these programs. To describe the process of EFMI accreditation of a new Austrian master's program and reflect on accreditation benefits. Reflection on feedback and experiences at UMIT TIROL Results: Accreditation needs quite some preparation but offers essential opportunities for self-reflection and feedback by international experts. Besides national accreditation, medical informatics programs can benefit from the accreditation through international organizations.

New Scopes for Practice - Interdisciplinary Webinars for Emergency Medicine and Biomedical Informatics - Health Informatics.

This paper presents the early outcomes of the educational cooperation between two European academic associations, namely the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) and European Society of Emergency Medicine (EUSEM). Two webinars were organized in December 2019 and June 2020 to explore areas where mutual education would be beneficial for interdisciplinary cooperation to advance the digitization of emergency departments for the benefit of patients, health professionals and the health system as a whole. Preliminary findings from the analysis of these two webinars are presented and the steps for further cooperation are outlined.

Building a Privacy, Ethics, and Data Access Framework for Real World Computerised Medical Record System Data: A Delphi Study. Contribution of the Primary Health Care Informatics Working Group.

Privacy, ethics, and data access issues pose significant challenges to the timely delivery of health research. Whilst the fundamental drivers to ensure that data access is ethical and satisfies privacy requirements are similar, they are often dealt with in varying ways by different approval processes. To achieve a consensus across an international panel of health care and informatics professionals on an integrated set of privacy and ethics principles that could accelerate health data access in data-driven health research projects. A three-round consensus development process was used. In round one, we developed a baseline framework for privacy, ethics, and data access based on a review of existing literature in the health, informatics, and policy domains. This was further developed using a two-round Delphi consensus building process involving 20 experts who were members of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) Primary Health Care Informatics Working Groups. To achieve consensus we required an extended Delphi process. The first round involved feedback on and development of the baseline framework. This consisted of four components: (1) ethical principles, (2) ethical guidance questions, (3) privacy and data access principles, and (4) privacy and data access guidance questions. Round two developed consensus in key areas of the revised framework, allowing the building of a newly, more detailed and descriptive framework. In the final round panel experts expressed their opinions, either as agreements or disagreements, on the ethics and privacy statements of the framework finding some of the previous round disagreements to be surprising in view of established ethical principles. This study develops a framework for an integrated approach to ethics and privacy. Privacy breech risk should not be considered in isolation but instead balanced by potential ethical benefit.

The Early History of European Federation of Medical Informatics

The story of the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) can be looked upon as one of the followers from the early days of the development of Societies and federations for persons interested in Information Technology and in cooperation and exchange of information and technology, not only in countries but also between countries.

A Short Factography About IMIA and EFMI

International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and European Federation of Medical Informatics are scientific associations which represents Health/Medical informatics as scientific and profesional disciplines. Those associations have long tradition in spreading knowledge, experiences and strategies in organization, practical applications and education within Health, Medical and Biomedical informatics in approximately 60 countries the world. In this review we present basic facts about IMIA and EFMI.who celebrate this 50 years of their establishing as professional associations.

EHealth in Europe – Status and Challenges

To present European reflections on the concept of eHealth and emerging challenges related to further development of eHealth in Europe. A survey with 10 questions was distributed to representatives of the national member associations of the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI). The results document a shift from a constricting ICT-orientation to development of the entire health system where eHealth strategies, organizational change, and appropriate technological infrastructure are singled out as important aspects. There are urgent needs to ensure that eHealth strategies and policies for further design and deployment of eHealth applications support sociable services and innovations in health care.

Sharing Knowledge and Tools for Decision Support in Biomedicine and Healthcare

The special topic conference Data and Knowledge for Medical Decision Support was held in Prague, April 17-19, 2013 under the auspices of the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI). The EFMI conference focused on the important topic of how advanced information and communication technologies can be used to combine expert knowledge with best practices in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases. After review of all submissions a scientific program could be established with 49 lectures, 32 posters, 7 workshops and one panel. The conference was attended by more than 160 delegates from 31 countries. Selected papers of the EFMI conference were published by IOS Press [1].

"Editing in the digital world" - scientific conference about medical editing and publishing, tallinn june 08-10.2012.

"Editing in the digital world" - scientific conference about medical editing and publishing, tallinn june 08-10.2012.

Personalized Health Informatics

It is indeed exciting to work in a field where challenges evolve rapidly and continuously. This is the privilege of disciplines, such as ours, that lie at the intersection of many scientif ic and societal domains. As physical and digital aspects of our lives mingle increasingly, the prospect of informatics making a real difference to health outcomes and healthcare processes becomes ever more realistic, but also generates high expectations. Our community is therefore challenged to tackle some of the most diff icult health-related societal issues such as the provision of equitable access to quality healthcare, the support for more efficient biomedical research, and the empowerment of citizens to better manage their health. For two decades, the IMIA Yearbook has been attempting to demonstrate how our health informatics community is advancing in dealing with these challenges, by highlighting excellent stateof-the -art research, by providing surveys and opinion papers about current developments, and by sharing information about our global, regional, and local activities. The first decade of the Yearbook was directed by its two co-founders, Jan van Bemmel and Alexa McCray. The second decade was co-edited by Reinhold Haux, Casimir Kulikowski and I. The time has come to thank the longest-serving co-editor of the Yearbook ever, Casimir Kulikowski, who will be retiring this year from this position. For twelve years, he brought creativity, out-of-thebox thinking, an extensive knowledge of our field and of its history, a special care for details and accuracy, and, most of all, lots of humor and an excellent sense of conviviality for such teamwork. The third decade of the Yearbook will start under the leadership of a new team, with Marie-Christine Jaulent and Brigitte Seroussi as co-editors, and Christoph Lehmann, as incoming IMIA vice-president for services. They will undoubtedly bring fresh ideas in order to best inform and serve our IMIA community as well as wider audiences. IMIA’s role as a global convener, facilitator of creative thinking, and promoter of best practices becomes more apparent as biomedical informatics gets embedded even more closely into healthcare systems and biomedical research. Several current IMIA-led initiatives illustrate how our strategic plan is now being implemented by Peter Murray, IMIA’s CEO, and his excellent team, with the guidance of IMIA’s board and general assembly. First, the open-access publication of a special issue of the WHO Bulletin, establishing the current evidence base for the impact of eHealth, or relative lack thereof, and the need for concerted actions to better measure the added value of health informatics tools and systems [1]. This effort was supported by funding from PEPFAR, IDRC and the Rockefeller Foundation. More than seventy contributions were submitted, but only a fraction could be published. Others will be considered for another special issue on this important theme, to be published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics, an official journal of IMIA. Actions will follow from these analyses, including work on policies and the development of tools to help implement them effectively, such as the def inition of a set of consistent indicators to measure the impact of eHealth interventions, and a database of eHealth related trials. Such activities are planned as part of a strengthened collaboration plan between WHO and IMIA. Other partnerships will also need to be developed, in particular in the field of health information standards. Second, the hosting of the 2012 European Summit on Trustworthy Reuse of Health Data [2], which, in collaboration with the European Federation of Medical Informatics, brought together government representatives, academia and the industry to jointly work to define and agree on key issues and possible solutions to facilitate research on the uses of health and healthcare record data. Subsequent activities include various publications targeted at several different key audiences, as well as work on policies, and, in particular, a framework that could help organize large-scale sharing of data and its meaningful and ethical reuse for research and healthcare service development. Third, the validation phase of an IMIA-led accreditation process for health informatics educational programs, designed by Arie Hasman, IMIA’s vicepresident for special affairs. The goal of this project is to improve sharing of best practices in health informatics education, through a solid process supported by experts from the IMIA community. Once validated on several test sites, this accreditation process will be made available more widely. These three examples of recent activities also highlight how each of us can, personally, using IMIA’s expertise and collaborative platform, contribute to help address some of the challenging issues our field faces, and pave the way for innovative solutions. This is yet another way of looking at “personalized health informatics”.

EHealth in Europe - Status and Challenges

Objectives: To present European reflections on the concept of eHealth and report challenges related to further development of eHealth in Europe. Methods: A survey with 10 questions was distributed to representatives of the national member associations of the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI). The material was summarized using content analysis techniques, generalized and discussed. Results: The results document a shift from a focus on ICT-orientation to initiatives that will development of the entire health system where eHealth strategies, organizational change, and appropriate technological infrastructure are singled out as important aspects. Conclusion: There are urgent needs to discuss eHealth strategies and policies to contribute to capacity building necessary to deploy eHealth applications that support sociable services and innovations in health care. As a contribution, the EFMI community will utilize arenas for capacity building on the European level, and stimulate collaboration across national boarders and health systems.

Selected Papers from the MIE 2009 Conference, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

It is quite a long tradition that the best papers presented at Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) conferences are selected and invited to submit as an extended paper to be published as journal article in a special issue. For the former years these selected papers have been published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics. Due to change of the publication policy, European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) made an agreement with the edi tors to move to Methods of Information in Medicine. This applies first for MIE 2009 held in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was not just a formal change, since the whole selection procedure had to be reshaped due to the stronger volume restrictions. From about 150 oral presentations more than 25 had been invited to submit an extended paper and finally four of them could be published. This is a really strong competition, which on one side is beneficial allowing to maintain a really high quality. On the other side this makes it very hard for the editor to give a representative picture about the ongoing research activity in the field. Somewhat luckily, the finally selected four papers cover quite large part of our domain. The group from UMIT (Universitat fur Gesundheitswissenschaften, Medizinische Informatik und Technik – Tirol) [1] asks a question about the justification of all activity in medical informatics: Can users accept the developed systems? At health policy level it is a commonplace that the use of electronic health records is essential for keeping the quality and cost effectiveness of health care delivery, also for evidencebased health system planning. But health policy makers rarely use EHR systems directly and the opinion of doctors working on the “battlefield” should not be disregarded. Systems that do not serve the real needs of their users are likely to fail. Hackl and his co-authors conclude however that the success of system implementation very much depends on the way how end users are informed about the system and how their concerns are treated. For centuries, life science researchers had some reason to be jealous to the success of physics. The advantage of physics seems to be related – among others – to the relative easiness of the formalization of the descriptions of phenomena, because this made the deployment of the whole arsenal of mathematics possible. As biomedical ontologies appeared on the horizon just in the last decades, nowadays we more and more can believe that medical phenomena also can be formally described. While a number of theoretical and pragmatic problems are waiting for solution, the way towards practical applications is already open. In the second paper [2] Ceusters and his co-workers present the development of an ontology for adverse events. They used a number of “feeder ontologies”, that are already at the disposal of researches, demonstrating that reuse and merging of ontologies is both desired and feasible but by no means an easy enterprise. But this paper also demonstrates that there is a quite long way ahead us. The authors cope with three levels of reality: what exists, what Methods Inf Med 2011; 50: 51–52

The Scientific Conferences Organized During War Time (1992-1995) in Sarajevo

Author of this paper spent 1479 days in the siege of Sarajevo, during the period of war time in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). This siege, lasting from 1992 to 1995 (e.g. Dayton Piece agreement was signed in November, 1995) represents the longest siege in the history of the world. Besides usual daily work, as the associate professor of Health education, Medical deontology and Medical informatics for the students of the Faculty of medicine, Faculty of dental medicine, Faculty of Pharmacy and Nursing college of University of Sarajevo, the author organized by himself and contributors, 10 scientific conferences in a sieged Sarajevo. All presented papers at those conferences are published in Proceedings abstract books, as the proof of continuing scientific work, in Sarajevo and other cities in B&H. Additionally, the author continued to publish, in that time, unique PubMed/MedLine indexed journal, - Medical Archives, (i.e. established in 1947) and, in 1993 formed a new journal named - “Acta Informatica Medica” (AIM) , as the Journal of the Bosnian Society of Medical informatics. Bosnian Society of Medical Informatics, thus became the first scientific association from Bosnia and Herzegovina, included in 1994, in the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) and the International Medical Informatics Assiciation (IMIA) , which was “miracle” from the besieged Sarajevo and war time result of aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina. It should be noted that the importance of maintaining these academic gatherings, in the circumstances of war, was multifaceted. First of all, thanks to these meetings, the continuity of scientific meetings and activities in the besieged city of Sarajevo was not broken, as well as the continuity of scientific publication, which was crucial for the maintenance of the teaching staff at the university and, finally, in the expansion of the “scientific truth” about what happened in Sarajevo and B&H in these difficult times. All of this was critical to the “survival” of B&H and its people. Some of the published articles, especially in the Medical Archives journal, which even in difficult war conditions did not break the continuity of its publication, and then it was the only scientific journal indexed in B&H, having been consequently cited in the major biomedical data bases in the world. Many scientists abroad have had the opportunity to learn about some of the wonders of Sarajevo “war medicine”, thanks to this journal. Finally, despite the fact that it is another way of expressing its resistance to the aggression on B&H, the organized symposia in the war represented the continuity of the scientific research activities. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sarajevo under siege, in this way, kept in touch with the civilized world and modern achievements, despite the fact that they were victims of medieval barbarism. In addition, these meetings sent a powerful message to the world about the willingness to register and systematize all the war experiences, especially those related to medicine and medical practice, in terms of what Europe has not known, since the Second World War. Partially, we succeeded in that. The total number of 286 presentations were presented in seven war Conferences, as quantitative and qualitative contribution to the scientific activities, despite the inhuman conditions, in which these articles emerged. These presentations and Conferences testify to the enthusiasm of B&H community and academic institutions that have collaborated with it. Authors and co-authors presented the “war” articles that deserve to be mentioned in the monograph “1479 days of the siege of Sarajevo”. Unfortunately, many of these brave authors are not alive and cannot read this. The task for us remains to remember them by their own good. Old Persian proverb says; “The event which is not recorded is as like it had never happened”. Sapienti sat.

Medical Informatics in a United and Healthy Europe

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: NONE DECLARED