Spotlight

Training the Trainers

Here's an NGO that provides free IT solutions to the healthcare industry. Priti Pathak tells you more about Indian Association of Medical Informatics (IAMI)

Indian Association of Medical Informatics (IAMI) came into being to sensitise the Indian medical community to the benefits of IT and to bring about awareness and greater utilisation of technology to healthcare facilities across the length and breadth of India.

Seeds of IAMI

Way back in 1993 some like-minded scientists and doctors joined hands to form IAMI. It is an association whose sole objective is promoting IT in healthcare, where most of the work and key posts are voluntary. Dr SB Gogia, President, IAMI says, "The objectives were to promote usage of IT in healthcare with the understanding that it will help in promoting the efficiency and reach of healthcare itself. One must remember that the Internet and telemedicine were much later concepts and the only aspects in vogue at that time were storage and retrieval of medical records and medical images."

The first president was Dr RD Lele, Director of Nuclear Medicine, Lilavati Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai. Medical informatics and IT in healthcare was already an existing phenomenon in the west in 1993-94 and this inspired the Founder to take this initiative of promoting

e-health in India. Other founders include Dr NG Rao (the second president), who runs his own consultancy of Medical Informatics and Dr Lazar Mathews, Director of Biotechnology, Vellore Institute of Technology. Later, more people like IT professionals, engineers, academicians, doctors working at Nizam's Institute, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS )all came together under one roof towards this objective. IAMI is associated with 15 institutions and organisations, of which the National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi, is the most prominent one. NIC and IAMI support and promote each other by hosting meetings and conferences since both are working for the same cause. These official conferences occur every two years and are meant for the members of IAMI.

In its early stages IAMI was totally a research based association which gave a platform to IT to reach out to healthcare thus increasing the efficiency of healthcare. IT was in India but there was no awareness about it, hence IAMI work focussed on creating this awareness across the nation.

IAMI Activities

"IAMI invites any medical professional or sister organisation who has problems in implementing IT to come to them for assistance and support" - Dr SB Gogia President Indian Association of Medical Informatics (IAMI)

IAMI calls itself the bridge between healthcare and software.

The work of IAMI is totally voluntary and its goal is 'Improvement of Healthcare through IT.' This organisation working on IT is making the best use of technology for communication. IAMI has not invested in any infrastructure or building, instead they have a virtual discussion group, which is an excellent forum for conducting in-depth analysis of issues pertaining to healthcare IT. "We do not have any office or organisation, the members work online," Dr Gogia explains. There are over 250 members in the current group, of which 30-32 are active in the discussions posted in the website (non-members can also view these discussions). Every month there is a new topic of the month where a particular topic is dicussed in detail and then a topic editor posts on a WIKI (wikipedia- this is created by IAMI). The discussion group is surely the key activity which is attracting fresh talent almost every day. The range of topics on which discussions have been held is vast.

Besides the above, members ask questions about their problems which are immediately answered by the senior members. As IAMI is an NGO, the members and the other people associated with it are professionals in their own field. They volunteer their contribution to the association. Apart from regularly meeting online, meetings are conducted by the members where they discuss the ongoing work.

The active discussion group also gets daily updates of any happening anywhere. Any link a member sends across in the discussion group is moderated first by a set of seven moderators. Over the last few years, the discussion group members at IAMI have identified reliable and unreliable sources for knowledge and allow more reliable ones automatic passage to maintain the speed. In other words the members keep updating the website with their IT knowledge which can be put to use in the healthcare industry. Apart from this, IAMI hosts a journal named Indian Journal for Medical Informatics. Earlier they had introduced an offline journal in 2003 to 2005, but it couldn't be sustained due to capital constraints.

Working Together

IAMI as an organisation is trendsetter of sorts as organisations like Telemedicine Society of India (TSI) and Medical Computer Society of India (MCSI), were formed based on the same priniciples of IAMI. However, while IAMI provides IT solutions in a broad spectrum, (see box), TSI restrict themselves to telemedicine while MCSI is now working with IAMI. There is no doubt that IAMI is the biggest, oldest organisation, as well as the one which reaches out to solutions across the entire spectrum of healthcare IT. “We also believe that the private sector— including the peripheral doctors and healthcare workers as well as patients are equal stakeholders in improving the healthcare scenario in India,” says Dr Gogia. IAMI is also the sole Indian member of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), USA.

Recently, IAMI has started a mentorship programme for their members wherein a junior person can join hands with a mentor for learning or running a project under a mentor. Any projects or partnerships that the executive is offered are immediately handed out to those interested in executing them. Members are offered discounts in the conferences IAMI participates in. IAMI has also started IAHI (IAMI Academy of Healthcare Informatics) where they shall be training staff working in healthcare establishments to various levels of competency in IT. IAMI members can sponsor their employees or join at discounted rates. "All research is undertaken by the members in a personal capacity," says Dr SB Bhattacharya, Secretary, IAMI.

Memberships

Currently the total membership count stands at 15 institutional, 3 honorary and 404 individual members. "The association would not have been able to sustain itself for so long, nor increased its membership, without the active support and participation of its members in all its activities. As a matter of fact many of the activities are sponsored by the members out of their own pockets," says Dr Bhattacharya. The members are the association. The role played by the association is a reflection of the role played by the members. There are only two types of membership currently available to those who are interested in healthcare informatics. One is individual life membership and the other is institutional life membership where all members pay only a one-time fee. Institutional members are able to nominate, on a rolling basis, a maximum of five people from their organisation to represent them. The members actively participate in all activities of IAMI and those that IAMI endorses or participates in like those for the Department of IT, and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Government of India. IAMI members promote their association wherever they go in India as well as abroad. Members get access to an active discussion group, free access to the Indian Journal of Medical Informatics, discount participation fees and the right to present papers in IAMI conferences/ seminars/ workshops, discounted participation fees at conferences conducted by international sister bodies, i.e., those affiliated to the IAMI, and negotiated discounts at other healthcare informatics conferences, seminars and workshops.

Growth and Expansion

A voluntary organisation can only expand in the form of membership and participation in various forums. Offers of taking talks, participation and partnerships of various exhibitions and meetings has expanded greatly in the last few years. So far in this year, they have been invited to join over eight event managers in their events. This includes one being held in Shanghai in November. The recent eHealth session of the eIndia Meeting in New Delhi had IAMI as one of key academic participants. However, every offer is reviewed carefully by the executives at IAMI to see if it meets the overall objective, thus IAMI is not participating in all the offered events. Its own meeting being only once every two years, a provision for sate chapters, has been made wherein the state chapters hold local physical meetings and pass on the contents as well as presentations online immediately for the benefit of the larger groups. The two chapters most active on this regard are Bangalore and Delhi. Over the last two-three years IAMI is expanding by leaps and bounds and its membership strength has increased by over 100. Although IAMI is an NGO, it continues to exist despite its very limited financial backing. This has been possible because of the zeal that the members had and still have in them. "We have a drive in us which is a reason for our long survival," says Dr Gogia.

Challenges to Overcome

Being a purely voluntary organisation the only sources of funds are membership and sponsorship— the latter by means of conducting conferences. As the conferences are only bi-annual, this frequency is not enough to generate sufficient surplus. In view of the recent offers of partnership in meetings, IAMI is now attempting to raise funds by joining hands with professional event managers wherein IAMI will run the academic component of their show in exchange for funding support as well as discounts for their members.

Low awareness about benefits of informatics and information technology in healthcare makes IAMI work extremely challenging. This makes the government, private sector and public-at-large reluctant to readily fund its endeavours. This makes most projects virtual non-starters, which leads to continued low awareness. Thus, there is a vicious cycle.

To alleviate this situation, members contribute to the association's activities from their own pockets, but this model of sustenance yields low results at the best of times since their paying capacity is limited. To overcome this challenge IAMI is approaching companies dealing with healthcare products and IT. Recently IAMI has approached Johnson & Johnson and Intel for financial backing. Drug companies do provide incentives to doctors for using their products and IT companies would be given training by IAMI through IAHI. In return IAMI would expect financial support from the IT and healthcare companies.

The goal of 'healthcare for all' through IT remains as IAMI's primary aim and it is a suitable incentive for all its members to keep at it despite the constraints as stated above. IAMI invites any medical professional or sister organisation who has problems in implementing IT to come to them for assistance and support. On the other side, it can also provide advice to the IT sector on how to improve its sales as well as service to its healthcare projects.

priti.pathak@expressindia.com