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Sunday, July 24, 2022

Is It Time For The Australasian Institute Of Digital Health To Really Be More Than A Conference Organiser?

This popped up a few days:

AIDH – MEDINFO23

About AIDH

The Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) is the peak body for digital health, representing a united and influential voice for health informatics and digital health leaders and practitioners.

The vision of the Institute is “healthier lives, digitally enabled”.

Fellows and Members of the Institute are actively involved in the national health agenda and the opportunities to advance healthcare delivered in a digital world.

The independent and not-for-profit Institute represents a broad and diverse membership of health informaticians, clinicians, researchers, healthcare managers and executives, data analysts, designers, project managers, business analysts, technologists and digital innovators.

Special digital health interest areas include precision health, genomics, virtual care, cybersecurity, clinical informatics, nursing informatics, health UX and digital public health.

As a leading member of the global health informatics and digital health community, the Institute is also the forum for sharing international best practices, digital healthcare trends and health system innovation.

AIDH is the Australian Society Member of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), and is proud to be hosting MedInfo 2023 on behalf of IMIA.

Here is the link:

https://meHeredinfo2023.org/about/aidh/

Here is a little about MedInfo 23.

About #MedInfo23

MedInfo 2023 – the 19th world congress on medical and health – is proudly presented by the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) on behalf of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).

The conference will be held 7 – 12 July 2023 at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Sydney, Australia, proudly supported by the NSW Government and Business Events Sydney.

This prestigious international event brings together hundreds of digital health leaders and practitioners at the forefront of healthcare and is considered a landmark event on the global calendar.

MedInfo 2023 will attract 2000+ Australian and international delegates, 250+ speakers, 100+ exhibitors and 20+ workshops and masterclasses.

Our event theme is – THE FUTURE IS ACCESSIBLE – transformational change to the health sector – where we aim to drive the many opportunities within digital health to reality.

Bringing together an international and national audience, this is your opportunity to network, share, and highlight the latest achievements, advancements, research and innovation in digital health and health informatics.

We cannot wait to welcome you to the Land Down Under for #MedInfo23.

Here is the link:

https://medinfo2023.org/about/

Here is another example of what that AIDH is doing:

AIDH, eHealth NSW partner for digital health conference

Monday, 18 July, 2022 

The Australasian Institute of Digital Health is partnering with NSW Health’s digital health agency eHealth NSW to host a digital health conference and expo in Sydney in October.

The Digital Health Summit by AIDH and eHealth NSW will focus on innovations and advances in digital health across NSW Health’s local health districts, specialty health networks and agencies that span the state’s metropolitan, regional and rural areas.

To be held at the International Convention Centre from 17–18 October 2022, the event will feature more than 100 presentations on digital health, virtual care, genomics, precision health, nursing and midwifery, mental health, allied health, safety and quality, patient and workforce experience, as well as highly specialised fields within health informatics.

AIDH CEO Dr Louise Schaper said the institute had worked closely with eHealth NSW for many years.

“The institute has a large fellowship in NSW, many of them embedded across major programs and initiatives, so we are looking forward to bringing together a really educational and informative program for those working in hospitals and public health care,” Schaper said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, including in health care. For NSW, like many jurisdictions, this has resulted in new innovations and an uptake in virtual care.

“The summit will have a strong professional development theme. Working in partnership with eHealth NSW means we can ensure the program will offer something for everyone, whatever their level of digital health knowledge,” she said.

eHealth NSW Chief Executive and NSW Health Chief Information Officer Dr Zoran Bolevich said, “It is timely to reflect on the advances in digital health across NSW, particularly with the release of Future Health 2022–2032, NSW Health’s roadmap for meeting the health needs of our community over the next decade. This summit provides a great opportunity to focus on the roadmap’s research and innovation priorities, particularly in relation to the digital advances informing future service delivery.

“eHealth NSW partners across the NSW public health system to deliver digital health solutions and services, putting us in a unique position to facilitate a showcase of NSW Health’s impressive digital innovations,” Bolevich said.

The summit will be co-chaired by Dr Bolevich and Angela Ryan, Vice Chair and Fellow of AIDH.

Here is the link:

https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/news/aidh-ehealth-nsw-partner-for-digital-health-conference-133131690

A few points that strike me:

1. MedInfo is big and the AIDH is relatively tiny in overall reach – global vs. Australia.

2. MedIno has an intensely academic flavour with AIDH more focused on Conference Organization etc.

3 The parent organization for IMIA is academic and research focussed with all sorts of publications etc. where the AIDH has little to say other than promoting events and meetings and itself.

As background  I suspect this explains a lot:

Digital health making history

The Australasian Institute of Digital Health was launched on 24 February 2020 following a member and Fellow vote to merge the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) and the Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI). Members and Fellows of the two organisations are Australia’s leaders and emerging leaders in health informatics and digital health.

Here is the link:

https://digitalhealth.org.au/

Prior to the merger ACHI was a largely academic group which sadly did not do a great deal and HISA became an effective conference organiser which only came fairly late to education etc.

To me, now the AIDH is established and going reasonably well I reckon it could do well to tone down the rather extravagant claims to importance and move to a mode of operations that more clearly distinguishes the marketing and conference roles from the educational, academic and  career development roles and as a third stream development of activity in advocacy policy development roles.

The objective would be to eventually have an organisation that had an academic as well as a managerial board and which maybe developed a journal to highlight Australian research and progress in digital health. To my eye these activities are rather under done and could be ramped up to develop a more balanced organisation into the future.

I am sure some will think all is OK as it is, or that the AIDH is irrelevant anyway or that I am just an elderly out-of-touch curmudgeon but I do feel improvement and more balance is possible, and Australian Digital Health would be better for it. Does anyone have any views?

David.

 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

“healthier lives, digitally enabled”

A prescribed solution to an ill-defined objective. (puns intended)

SNAFU.

Anonymous said...

David, does the ANDhealth and the Digital Health CRC no now cover the academic side of things with CSIRO and others including ARDC take that one step further? With all the other quasi digital health entities the arena is pretty noisy already.

ADIH would simply become yet another competing organisation for a small group of stakeholders and scarce reseources.

Perhaps a better idea is to strip the other organisation of comms, engagement and media and the simply source those services from ADIH who can focus on create the best experiences for their customers.

Jeremy Knibbs - Medical Republic said...

Hi David,

The AIDH is playing money catch up via putting on more conferences in 2022 post a period of two years during covid where their major money spinner, their annual Digital Health Summit couldn't be run. They ran their national summit in Melbourne this year. They also run a Telehealth Summit yearly, but this year they decided to run Digital halth summits in Perth, Sydney and Brisbane...that's right four summits in one year! We run a small summit and unfortunately planned it on the date of their Sydney summit - we didn't know as we actually went out before they did on their Sydney meeting. A AIDH director sent us an email saying we were "deliberate and innappropriate competition..." to the Institute, as if we'd done something sacrosanct. The email also said the summit in Sydney was national so our Melbourne event was competing...So the AIDH is running two national summits within about six months of each other in one year. The AIDH I feel has been mainly a great member group - good for networking mostly. But are they running so many events in one year for their members or for money? Feels a lot like the latter.

G. Carter said...

Thank you for highlighting this Jeremy. The behaviour of AIHD is hardly surprising. I know I will reconsider future attendance to AiDH events.