By: Orin M. Goldblum, MD, Coordinator, AMIA
Mobile Computing Special Interest Group:
Orin is a dermatologist practicing in Pittsburgh, PA and
maintains an affiliation as Clinical Assistant Professor
of Dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
In addition to his medical practice, he is Director of the
eHealthRx Service for Healthcare
Industries Research Companies, a pharmaceutical industry
research consulting firm based in Santa Cruz, CA. An early
adopter of handheld electronic prescribing, Orin also serves
as a consultant to ePhysician,
a company improving patient care and practice efficiencies
through clinical handheld services. He is the Moderator
of the Wireless
Medical Applications listserv and General
Discussions forum on PDA cortex. Last year, Orin published
the first detailed evaluation of a handheld e-prescribing
system appearing in a peer-reviewed medical journal. A member
of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA),
he recently founded the new AMIA
Mobile Computing Special Interest Group. He is a 1981
graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
in Pittsburgh, PA, and trained in dermatology at the Johns
Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, MD. Orin resides
in Pittsburgh with his wife Elaine and two sons, Alex and
Michael.
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Background
The American
Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) is a nonprofit membership
organization of individuals, institutions, and corporations dedicated
to developing and using information technologies to improve health
care. The AMIA is the premier organization to advance discovery
and innovation in the use of information in health and biomedicine.
The mission of the AMIA is to advance the field by fostering innovation
and scientific exchange, educating professionals and the public,
and influencing decision and policy makers regarding the use of
information in health and biomedicine.
The AMIA was formed in 1990 by the merger of three
organizations-the American Association for Medical Systems and
Informatics (AAMSI), the American College of Medical Informatics
(ACMI), and the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical
Care (SCAMC). Membership in the AMIA consists of 3,200 physicians,
nurses, computer and information scientists, biomedical engineers,
medical librarians, and academic researchers and educators. AMIA
is the official US representative organization to the International
Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).
Activities of the AMIA include the AMIA Annual Symposium,
the AMIA Spring Congress, the Journal of the American Medical
Informatics Association (JAMIA), Working Groups and Special Interest
Groups, public policy initiatives, the AMIA Resource Center and
interorganizational collaboration.
AMIA Working Groups and Special Interest Groups
Besides providing outstanding, valuable membership
benefits for individual members, one of the many goals of the
AMIA is to foster the development and maintenance of working groups
and special interest groups relevant to the needs of its members.
The AMIA has a number of active Working Groups and Special Interest
Groups dealing with specialized topics and areas within the field
of medical informatics.
Working Groups serve as a mechanism for members
who share interests on a particular topic to exchange information
with colleagues and to help develop and organize positions, issues,
white papers, programs, and other activities benefiting the informatics
community. Working Groups each have their own online e-mail discussion
lists in which key issues and developments in the field can be
discussed by subscribers. Special Interest Groups also serve as
a method for members to share their expertise, information and
opinions, to mentor other members within a particular specialized
area of medical informatics, and to develop a network of peers
who share similar interests. Special Interest Groups also have
their own e-mail discussion lists. The discussion lists are only
available to members of the particular Working Groups or Special
Interest Groups.
AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest Group
At the November 2001 AMIA Annual Symposium, held
in Washington, DC, there was significant interest in the growing
use of handheld and wireless computing in health care. A review
of PDA & wireless technologies presented and discussed at
the AMIA 2001 Annual Symposium was published on PDA cortex following
the meeting. During the meeting, I mentioned the idea of a new
AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest Group to Suzanne Bakken,
RN, DNSc, who served as Chair of the Scientific Program Committee.
She encouraged me to collect the required number of signatures
from AMIA members attending the meeting who might be interested
in such a new Special Interest Group.
With Suzanne's encouragement, and the assistance
of many others with an interest in mobile computing, specifically,
Parvati Dev, PhD, Larry Afrin, MD, Mari Stoddard, MLIS, and Scott
Strayer, MD, we easily collected the required number of signatures
for a new AMIA Special Interest Group. Shortly after the meeting,
I submitted the petition for a new Mobile Computing Special Interest
Group to the AMIA. Recently, the AMIA Working Group Steering Committee
approved the establishment of this new Special Interest Group.
I wish to thank both Karen Greenwood, AMIA Director of Member
Services, and Mary Ellen Doran, AMIA Manager of Communications,
for their assistance in helping to get this group started.
The March
15, 2002 issue of the AMIA Alert contained this announcement:
"The burgeoning adoption of mobile and wireless
health care information technology tools can provide critically
important access to disease, drug, treatment, evidence-based and
patient information at the point-of-care. By establishing an organized
network of mobile health care computing users, comprehensive information
sources, educational resources, guidelines, protocols, research
proposals and educational curricula on mobile and wireless health
care computing technologies can be developed and disseminated.
The AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest Group invites all interested
AMIA members to join and participate in this newly formed SIG."
As mentioned on the AMIA Mobile Computing Special
Interest Group's home
page, the Purposes of this group are:
Reasons for joining the AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest
Group are mentioned in the following paragraph:
Significant importance is currently being focused
on the needs for improved health outcomes, reduction of medical
errors and health care cost containment. Overcoming these key
health care challenges can be accomplished, in part, by the adoption
of emerging mobile and wireless information technology tools,
which can provide critically important access to disease, drug,
treatment, evidence-based, and patient information at the point-of-care.
By establishing an organized network of active mobile computing
users, comprehensive information sources, educational resources,
guidelines, protocols, research proposals and educational curricula
on mobile and wireless technologies in health care can be developed
and disseminated.
Mobile Computing Special Interest Group Plans
for 2002-2003
Our first accomplishment is the establishment of
mc-sig,
the AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest Group's mailing list.
Although we do not intend to compete with other mobile health
care computing mailing lists, such as PDA Verticals' pdaMD.com,
Dr. Michael Kramer's palm-med, PDA
cortex, Dr. David Blair's Wireless
Medical Applications, and many other popular mobile health
care computing discussion lists, mc-sig is a list for members
interested in communicating information and discussing topics
with colleagues who share their interest in the use of mobile
computing as a means to improve health care.
Although the AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest
Group is still in its organizational stages, there are a number
of future activities under consideration. With the enthusiastic
interest and support of several leaders in the mobile health care
computing community, the group has recently submitted a proposal
for a panel discussion presentation on handheld computing in health
care at the next AMIA Annual Symposium, to be held November 9-13,
2002, in San Antonio, Texas.
Other activities, projects and publications the
AMIA Mobile Computing Special Interest Group will consider are
the following: