Dear Colleague,
It is my honor to report to you on the state of AMIA as my tenure progresses. And I’m happy to report that AMIA is in a strong position to continue leading the future of biomedicine and healthcare informatics. Momentum is with us, friends!
Enjoying a Successful CIC
The recent Clinical Informatics Conference (CIC) in Minneapolis was a tremendous success attracting more than 750 attendees. Colleagues came from 45 states as well as Armenia, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, South Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand, and the UK. These three days were dedicated to turning innovation into practice-ready solutions that make an immediate impact. Thank you again to the CIC conference leadership and the hard-working individuals of the Scientific Program Committee.
Among CIC’s many milestones were introducing the FAMIA class of 2024, hosting up to 26 sessions for AMIA Working Groups (including the newest, Climate, Health and Informatics), and furthering critical work on reducing documentation burden health professionals (see note below).
Critical session topics included innovation in driving digital equity, AI improving clinician wellbeing, and care outcomes, industry and commercial partnership, and leadership and governance. Speaking of AI, CIC opening keynote speakers YC Sun and Jenna Fizel from IDEO reminded us that AI is helping us to see in new ways and learn from other industries. “It’s all of our responsibility to engage deeply with AI tools, and bring along our colleagues and the public, helping them be an active part of building our shared future,” they said.
Mark your calendar for May 20-22, 2025, for the next CIC in Anaheim, CA.
Advocating to Reduce Documentation Burden
At CIC in Minneapolis, we released the results of the AMIA 25x5 Taskforce’s first-ever TrendBurden Pulse Survey, which ran April 10-30, and received 1,253 responses from healthcare professionals across 49 states and the District of Columbia. The inaugural results provide a baseline and mark a significant step in AMIA’s work to address clinical documentation burden.
Key findings from the survey reveal significant concerns regarding documentation time and effort. Additionally, 77.42% of respondents reported finishing work later than desired or needing to work at home due to excessive documentation tasks. These results highlight the significant negative impact excessive documentation burden has on work-life balance among healthcare professionals.
Other findings focused on recent changes, patient care, and EHR use. When asked about recent changes in documentation burden, most respondents (66.64%) disagreed that there had been a recent decrease in the time or effort needed to complete documentation tasks, with physicians (74.2%) reporting this more than nurses (60.8%). The perceived impact of documentation on patient care is notable, with 74.38% of respondents agreeing that the time required for documentation impedes patient care.
Most respondents noted that the Electronic Health Record is difficult to use. Only 31.76% of all respondents (21.9% physicians, 38% nurses) agree or strongly agree that documenting patient care using electronic health records is easy. Reacting to the ease of use of the Electronic Health Record (EHR), only 31.76% of all respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they found it easy to use, including 21.9% of physicians and 38% of nurses. Additionally, 23.62% of respondents were neutral, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, with 21.3% of physicians and 23.5% of nurses in this category. A significant 44.61% disagreed or strongly disagreed, indicating difficulties with system usability, with 56.9% of physicians and 38.5% of nurses expressing dissatisfaction.
The TrendBurden Survey will be administered again in early fall 2024, seeking to broaden its reach even further in the health professional community.
Seeking Recognition by the Federal Government
AMIA has taken on the tremendous task of attempting to have clinical informatics officially recognized by the Federal Government. Clinical informatics is not currently well captured within standard employment taxonomies, such as the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) codes taxonomy maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), or the occupation taxonomies maintained by Census or O*NET. Governmental systems such as SOC codes officially recognizing and documenting the clinical informatics workforce will allow for more understanding of the growth in this industry and properly gauge salaries for this profession.
One way for AMIA to help our case to BLS is by performing an environmental scan of clinical informatics. We worked with a third-party vendor, Lightcast, to capture and detail the clinical informatics field, including job titles, job descriptions, relevant certification, and degree names, and typically required education and experience levels, among other information. Lightcast used the information provided by AMIA to create search terms to identify demand for clinical informatics as expressed in job postings. Lightcast then mined a comprehensive database of millions of job postings collected nationally between 2017 and 2023 to quantify demand for clinical informatics.
In addition, AMIA members are leading the charge to demonstrate the value of the Informatics field in healthcare and the nation’s occupational structure through several other projects.
You may remember that AMIA had several wins in this space in 2023, including but not limited to working directly with the Department of Labor on relevant O*NET codes and engaging 42 stakeholders to support our application for a “Clinical Informatics” code. AMIA continues to engage these issues and capitalize on these recent successes. For more information on AMIA’s Occupational Code work, [please see here].
Making Strides in Education
AMIA will soon begin capturing live education at AMIA’s meetings for use in AMIA’s Learning Management System (LMS), making it available to attendees who do not attend in-person or who miss sessions due to busy schedules and in a variety of formats. This model would allow AMIA to create learner-centric, online education including tracks, personalized learning, and bundles.
Beginning this year, AMIA will create a curricular framework from which the staff, leaders, and members could develop learner-centric CPD/CE education that allows staff to leverage our education content, proactively plan across the portfolio and member segments for content development, develop competitive revenue generating resources, and retain experts to support a long-term content development strategy. The curriculum framework would also allow us to determine what type of education AMIA is uniquely positioned to offer, introduce program-level assessments, facilitate tracks to meet all member needs, and respond to market needs such as AI.
Reporting on DEI Efforts
The Women in AMIA and DEI committees continue to lead our DEI efforts building on work done in 2023 to expand the inclusiveness of the First Look for Students program. Eligibility was expanded to include women who identify as female and transwomen. The program outreach was also expanded to reach students and faculty in Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Universities and Colleges, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges.
A proposal was made to expand inclusiveness further by extending the First Look for Students program to include a First Look for Faculty program, a collaboration between DEI-WIA and the Academic Forum.
In light of the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action and recent state and federal legislation regarding DEI, the Board of Directors issued a statement affirming the organization’s continued support of DEI within AMIA.
Thank you for your membership and your commitment to our mission. Your AMIA Board Members welcome your questions, comments, and feedback. If you are attending Symposium later this summer, please make time for Bagels With the Board. We’d love to see you there./
Yours sincerely,
Genevieve Melton-Meaux, MD, PhD, FACMI
AMIA President and Board Chair
Professor of Surgery and Health Informatics
Senior Associate Dean, Health Informatics and Data Science
Director, Center for Learning Health System Sciences
University of Minnesota
Chief Analytics and Care Innovation Officer, M Health Fairview