FAMIA FAQs

FAMIA stands for "Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association" and it recognizes the contributions and professional accomplishments of AMIA members who apply informatics skills and knowledge to their practice – be that in a clinical setting, a public or population health capacity, or as a clinical researcher.

FACMI is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. These fellows are elected into the College by existing ACMI fellows and must have sustained extensive contributions of biomedical informatics with at least 10 years of experience. The primary difference between FACMI and FAMIA is largely due to three factors:

FACMI is an honorific society that grants membership to a subset of applicants based on voting; FAMIA is a merit-based designation, granted to everyone who applies and meets eligibility criteria (no cap on membership per year, no voting on membership).
FACMI recognizes academic contributions to the field of informatics from members who have or are close to a tenure track within an academic setting; FAMIA recognizes applied contributions to the field of informatics from members who work within an operational setting.
FACMI recipients advance their careers through publication, impact factor, grants, and by expanding or deepening the knowledge base within the field of informatics; FAMIA recipients advance their careers through certification, continuing education and other forms of professional development credit, and by demonstrating informatics competencies by applying informatics knowledge to practice.

Current or aspiring FACMI members are encouraged to apply for FAMIA if they meet the Eligibility Criteria. And nothing would preclude a FAMIA recipient from being nominated for FACMI.

Applied informatics within the context of FAMIA is an operational focus on information and knowledge problems that directly impacts the practice of health care, public health, and personal health. Examples of the types of activities that qualify an individual as working in applied informatics for the purposes of FAMIA include the following:

Assess and develop effective solutions to meet the information and knowledge needs of health care and public health professionals, patients, and citizens in general.
Implement and evaluate effective systems to support health and health care decision-making and manage personal health.
Characterize, develop, evaluate, and refine health and health care processes that support effective, efficient, safe, timely, equitable, and patient-centered care.
Develop effective practice improvements, process and workflow redesign, or automation.
Utilize informatics approaches to improve system design, implementation, evaluation, and evolution/optimization.
Ensure the legal, ethical, and effective use of health and health care data and information.
Lead procurement, customization, development, integration, implementation, management, evaluation, and continuous improvement of health and health care informatics systems.
Align system priorities with clinical/health care and health needs.
Utilize the rapidly expanding amounts of data becoming available in various health and health care organizations (eg, payers, providers, pharmaceuticals) to derive insights for improving care delivery and population health.

View the eligibility criteria for more information on who is eligible to apply for FAMIA.

Applicants must meet all FAMIA eligibility criteria, including education, applied informatics experience, and certification, by the application deadline. If any requirement will be completed after the deadline, you will need to wait until the next application cycle to apply.

No, you must have at least two years of post-education experience.

You must an Advanced Health Degree (MD/DO, MSN, DNP, PharmD, DPH, or equivalent). Note: the educational attainment, experience, and certification are interlinked requirements for FAMIA.

Applicants are required to hold current AMIA full membership (digital membership are not eligible) and have maintained membership for at least three of the past five years. A year is defined as January 1 – December 31.

Yes, as long as your colleague or former employer is a current AMIA full member and understands the skills required to be an applied informatician. They do not need to have obtained the FAMIA recognition themselves.

An AMIA Contribution must be within the last 5 years (most recent contributions are preferred) and could be any of the following:

A paper where you were the primary or senior author published through an AMIA-endorsed journal that exemplifies your work as an applied informatics professional;
A poster, panel, tutorial, workshop where you were the primary or senior author at an AMIA conference;
A description of your accomplishments as lead of an AMIA Working Group;
A description of your contributions to an AMIA committee, task force, or equivalent;
Other contributions the application views as meeting the spirit of this Criterion.

Leadership means you have held a leadership office inside an active AMIA Working Group. This may be chair, president, or co-chair. If you feel you have contributed, but cannot meet any of the described options, please consider checking the “other” box and provide a narrative explaining your contributions to AMIA in the last five years.

You should have received an email with a “return link” when you created the application.