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Thursday, September 9, 2010
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Last updated: 08/21/2009
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| Consumer Health Informatics |
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| Founded: 2000 |
| Membership: 19 |
| http://www.jmir.org/imia-chi/ |
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| Chair |
Term of Office: 2008 - 2011 |
| Houston II, Dr. Thomas K, MD MPH |
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| Director, Health Informatics Unit, Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE) |
| University of Alabama at Birmingham |
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| +1 205 934 7997 |
| +1 205 975 7797 |
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| Vice-Chair |
Term of Office: 2008-2011 |
| Wetter, Prof. Dr. Thomas |
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| Deputy Director, Department of Medical Informatics |
| University of Heidelberg |
| Heidelberg Germany D 69120 |
| +49 6221 56 7490 |
| +49 6221 56 4997 |
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| Vice-Chair |
Term of Office: 2008-2011 |
| Jimison, Ms. Holly |
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| Oregon Health & Science University |
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Goals & Objectives
Scope
The Consumer Health Informatics Working Group (CHIWG) became an official IMIA Working Group in 2000. The CHIWG is concerned with electronic information related to health care available to the public (e.g. Internet, wireless, standalone electronic media). For its purposes, it defines Consumer Health Informatics as the use of modern computers and telecommunications to support consumers in obtaining information, analyzing unique health care needs and helping them make decisions about their own health (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1996, p.1.), in which the consumer interacts with the applications directly with or without the presence of health care professionals. The group's interests focus on, but are not limited to, world wide web sites that offer advice about healthy living, research findings, and recommendations on specific disease conditions, descriptions of products, medications, and self-care health programs available to the public. Issues of concern may be the evaluation of the quality of information, education of the public, ethical issues related to the electronic information, and the effect on a person's health care and relationship with health care providers.
Leadership/Chairs
Betty Chang has stepped down as co-chair. Gunther Eysenbach, co-chair since the inception of the group in 2000, has agreed to serve as chair for a further 2 years (2007/2008) to ease transition to a new leadership team. A new co-chair is currently sought, with the prospective of becoming chair in 2 years.
Group activities
The main activity of the WG was to organize the MEDNET eHealth conference (www.ehealthcongress.org) in Toronto, Oct 14-19, 2006, which was chaired by Gunther Eysenbach, and which - for the first time - was positioned and branded as an IMIA WG CHI event.
The theme of the conference was Improving Public Health through the Internet, and it was co-sponsored by major agencies and organizations such as the National Cancer Institute (US and Canadian) and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR).
The Mednet conference was a significant success with about 500 participants and over 350 presentations covering CHI-relevant topics such as
- patient portals;
- putting electronic health records online;
- etrials: using the web and etechnologies for clinical trials;
- public (e-)health, population health technologies, surveillance;
- Health information on the web: Supply and Demand;
- Next-generation Internet health applications;
- semantic web applications and search engine technologies;
- psychobehavioral interventions on the Internet;
- evaluation and methodological issues in ehealth;
- web-based medical education;
- health communication on the internet;
- Internet for disease prevention;
- ehealth for chronic diseases;
- online pharmacies;
- usability and human factors on the web;
- telehealth and medical practice using IP technologies;
- health-e body weight: ehealth technologies for healthy eating and active lifestyle;
- cancer and the Internet (cancer-track kindly sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute)
- web-assisted tobacco interventions.
- Internet based publishing and peer-review;
The complete 44-page final program can be downloaded at http://yi.com/mednet06/program.pdf (10 MB!)
The final abstract book can be downloaded at http://yi.com/mednet06/draft-mednet2006book.pdf (4 MB!).
Other activities included the organization of a tutorial at the 9th International Congress in Nursing Informatics (Special Interest Group of the International Medical Informatics Association) June 11-14, 2006. Seoul, Korea, which was taught by Gunther Eysenbach.
Objectives for the next 3 years:
The WG hopes to work with the IMIA leadership on strengthening the role of the Working Groups within IMIA. We look forward to greater participation in key IMIA activities, increasing the visibility and impact of CHI WGs in the world.
- Provide greater opportunities to share CHI related information from relevant and accessible sources such as the International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMIA), and the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). Emphasis will be given to high-quality studies and randomized trials published in quality journals.
- The group plans to hold a business meeting at Medinfo 2007, and plans a tutorial
- The group will continue to liaise with counterparts in other countries, such as the AMIA WG CHI, EFMI, IMIA's NI-SIG(WG on CHI).
- A priority will be to expand our contacts with CHI interest groups in Asia and Africa.
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Interested in joining this group? Click HERE to enquire.
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