HIC 2012: 30th July – 2nd August

This year’s HIC (Health Informatics Conference), HIC2012, was held in Sydney and featured more than 100 presentations over the four-day duration.  As Australia’s largest e-health and health informatics conference, the annual event attracts attendees from all over Australasia and further afield. With the primary theme of Health Informatics – Building a Healthcare Future through Trusted Information, this year’s conference was the most successful yet, attended by more than 900 people and attracting extremely positive feedback.

HIC is run by HISA:

It is our goal to advance the cause of health informatics in this country and to support and advocate for our membership while also bringing them educational and professional development opportunities that will help them become active and effective members of the health industry.

HISA is a leader of thought and progress in this industry, and represents Australian health informatics community on the world stage as the Australian national affiliate of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).

HBIRU had a very strong presence at HIC 2012, significantly raising the profile of the unit nationally and internationally.

Selected HBIRU staff member contributions:

• “We are not educating the future clinical health informatics workforce adequately for eHealth competence: findings of an Australian study”. Paper was accepted and published, and Dr Ambica Dattakumar presented the findings as part of the Scientific stream ‘Health Informatics Workforce and External Drivers and Demand’.
• Dr. Dattakumar (on behalf of Dr. Gray) also participated in ‘Contemporary Developments in eHealth Education’, part of the Academic Leaders stream.

Prof Fernando Martin-Sanchez was especially busy as a member of the HIC 2012 Strategic Advisory Committee. Some of his contributions include:

• Giving the “Introduction to Scientific Program” at the conference official opening;
• Co-Editor of IOS Press Book Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Vol 178 “Health Informatics: Building a Healthcare Future through Trusted Information – selected papers from 20th Australian National Health Informatics Conference”;
• Chair of Plenary Session 6 – “Future of Healthcare”, bringing in two keynote speakers from US, Rajiv Mehta (Quantified Self) and Prof Lucila Ohno-Machado (Translational Research Informatics);
• Panel member for Plenary Session 7: HISA Q&A session “Can Australia Lead the World in Digital Healthcare – The Role of Health Informatics and its’ professionals”;
• Organiser and presenter of the awards for Best Paper and Best Student Paper at the closing ceremony;
• Brought Prof Lucila Ohno-Machado (Head Division of Biomedical Informatics at University of California San Diego and Editor in Chief of JAMIA, one of the top scientific journals in Health Informatics) to Melbourne, arranged scientific event on Friday 3rd August;
• Elected as a Director to the board at the HISA AGM;
• was invited to write a chapter for a new book on Health Information Governance.

A great success for all concerned!

HIC 2013 will be held in mid July 2013, in Adelaide.