History of IAMI

In Detail…

IAMI was registered in September 1993 with its Registered Office being the Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, in Hyderabad, India. The founder member included Dr N. G. Rao, Dr R. D. Lele, Prof. S. K. Guha (IIT and AIIMS, Delhi), Dr. Lazar Mathew (DEBEL, Bangalore). The name approved by the majority of the founder members was ‘Indian Association for Medical Informatics’ in short, I.A.M.I. to match with similar associations of other countries. The logo designed by Colonel K. Bhaskara Reddy (General Manager, Medinova Diagnostics, Hyderabad, founder member) was officially adopted.

Dr. Dr. R. D. Lele (author, Computer Applications in Medicine) consented to become the first President. The first Vice President, Dr. N. G. Rao drafted the aims, objectives and byelaws of the association after consulting the founder members, senior advocates and chartered accountants.

Since, its inception, all the Founder Members of IAMI very enthusiastically carried out the membership drive and they were successful in organizing the first conference, IAMI-1995 at Hyderabad in Hotel Golconda. It had 120 participating members presenting about 60 scientific and business papers. Many hospitals, medical institutes, research organizations, computer firms, computer dealers and large corporations with own hospitals participated in the conference.

The first General Body Meeting decided to hold the conferences of the association in future only once every two years. This was done in view of the fact that conduction of a conference at national level requires an enormous effort in terms of time and money and there would not be much of a change or improvement in the subjects for presentation in the conference every year. It was further decided to hold workshops and seminars in the alternate years to ensure continuity and stimulate awareness in this emerging field of healthcare and informatics study. It was also decided to hold the conferences in different states of the country every time to create awareness on computer applications in medicine, health and allied fields throughout the country.

IAMI made a tie-up with Medinova Diagnostics, NIMS, Osmania Medical College, Gandhi Medical College and Hyderabad University and conducted many beginners’ courses for doctors, nurses, dentists, paramedical personnel and computer professionals working on HIS. Both short and long term courses in basics of computers and computer applications in medicine were conducted. The association was successful in enrolling many hospitals, institutes and organizations as Institutional Life Members that included such prestigious institutions as Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), MNJ Institute of Oncology, Hyderabad, Prema Hospital, Visakhapatnam, National Hospital, Jabalpur, PersonalMD.com, California (Neotrax, India), PGI, Chandigarh, and in enrolling a number of non-resident Indians as as life members. The association also took initiative to establish Indian Confederation for Healthcare Accreditation, New Delhi and made IAMI as one of its member organizations. Action was also initiated to include Medical Informatics as one of the elective subjects in the UG curriculum for all medical colleges in India and to get academic credits from IMA for all the delegates participating in the conferences, seminars and workshops organized by the association.

Dr Dr Lazar Mathew, the then Director of DEBEL, Bangalore, organized the second conference, IAMI-1997, in Bangalore at the Indian Institute of Science, with full support by Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and the institute. More than 200 persons attended it. The General Body Meeting of IAMI held on this occasion elected Prof. N. G. Rao as the next President. Dr Lazar Mathew also brought out an elaborate cornucopia of the proceedings of the conference after four months.

The third conference IAMI-1999 was to be held in Madras but this had to be postponed due to natural calamities and shortage of time. Hence this conference got postponed till 2001 and a major workshop was held in lieu of it in NIMS, Hyderabad.

IAMI-2001 therefore became the third conference. This was very successfully conducted at YMCA Hall, Parliament Street, New Delhi, organized by Mr. Atul Bal and Dr Ajay Bal of Protech Ltd, Dr. Naval Kishore of Tendercare and many doctors from Private and Public Hospitals in Delhi. The GBM of IAMI re-elected Prof N. G. Rao as the President.

The GB at IAMI-2001 authorized Dr. Sanjay Bedi to start iami@yahoogroups.com for discussion on medical informatics matters. This was started initially with the 10 members and has now grown as the de facto information source for medical informatics related activities in India. Its active members include almost the entire Who’s Who of medical informatics scene of India.

A long felt need of IAMI members to have its own web site was fulfilled in the year 2002 when the President Prof. N. G. Rao designed the site and contents. Dr. O. P. Sharma, life member of IAMI and the then Director of IndMedica Ltd., Chandigarh, agreed to create the official web site, www.iamindia.org, and maintain it at a subsidized rate. This has recently been changed to www.iami.org.in and is slated for a complete overhaul making it more interactive and informative by end of 2006. The fourth conference, IAMI-2003, was held at PGI, Chandigarh. Drs. O. P. Sharma and A. K. Attri, in collaboration with PGI and the local branch of IMA, organized this in an excellent and enviable manner. The actual conference was preceded by a pre-conference workshop on computer use by medical professionals. A healthy number of sponsors, advertisers and exhibitors took part in the conference and many fresh delegates joined the IAMI making it a very successful event. In the General Body Meeting of IAMI held on this occasion, members elected Dr OP Sharma as the President.

Dr. S. Sanyal, Vice President IAMI, offered to host a mid-conference in Kolkata in 2004, which was approved by the general body. This was termed as Midcon-2004 and held in the South-Eastern Railways Hospital in Kolkata in May 2004. This conference saw an entire session dedicated solely to providing tele-bridges to various centers across the globe for providing telemedicine services. Prestigious hospitals were linked up to the conference venue and live demonstration of patients being consulted and their treatments planned was carried out in a very efficient and effective manner.

The desire of having a regular journal of the association was fulfilled when Dr Sanjay Bedi was appointed Editor-in-Chief with Dr. S N Sarbadhikari as Associate Editor and Dr. Satish Kumar and Mr. Vinay Pande as Assistant Editors. This effort culminated in the publication of both the on-line and hard copy versions of Indian Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI). The President, Dr. O. P. Sharma, officially released the first edition during Midcon-2004, Kolkata. The ISSN number of the journal is 0973-0379. Two further editions had been brought out in December 2004 and October 2005.

The fifth conference, IAMI-2005, was held at Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences in Amritsar under the able chairmanship of Dr Sanjay Bedi. It was a great success with live telemedicine sessions and videoconferencing sessions. Around 275 registered delegates and 150 unregistered (students) delegates participated from all over India and many organizations and software companies participated in demo sessions and put up exhibits in stalls. The October 2005 issue of IJMI and the second edition of the book “Computer Applications in Medicine” written by Dr. R. D. Lele, Founder and first President of IAMI, were released during the conference. This conference too was preceded by a daylong pre-conference CME on “Basics of Computers and Linux/Open Source” for the attending delegates.

In 2006 the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) officially recognized IAMI as the representative from India and admitted it to full membership. Dr. O. P. Sharma demitted office and the IAMI elected Dr. Sashi Bhushan Gogia to be the next President in the same year.

The sixth conference, IAMI-2007, was held in the Centre for Digital Health, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Kochi, Kerala organized by Drs. Ajit N. Babu and S. N. Sarbadhikari. There was active participation from medical informaticists from all over the world and several interesting and relevant topics were discussed. Innovative ideas in the form of Bio-Mems were presented. A unique form of debate-cum-symposium called “debosium” was organized that was well appreciated by all. Dr. Sashi Bhushan Gogia was re-elected as President in the elections held that year.

The members unanimously accepted that the next conference, IAMI-2009, to be held in the city of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh as proposed by Mr. Bhudeb Chakravarti. It is expected to be co-sponsored by IIIT, Hyderabad and IEEE, Hyderabad Chapter. Due to this unique co-sponsorship, the association is expecting that this conference will have a strong software engineering focus dealing more on the technical and implementation aspects of healthcare IT in general and medical informatics in particular. It would therefore address the larger healthcare informatics community rather than confining itself only to the healthcare providers.

Post IAMI 2007, Dr. Suptendranath Sarbadhikari took over as the Editor-in-Chief of IJMI. With the able support from the Associate Editors - Ajit N Babu and Vasumathi Sriganesh, and the technical backing from the indefatigable Sukhdev Singh, the online "Open Access" avatar of Indian Journal of Medical Informatics [http://ijmi.org/index.php/ijmi/index] made its fresh appearance. The new venture was blessed by the warm encouragement from our International Advisors - Vimla Patel and Ralph R Grams from USA, Diana Schmidt from Germany, Frank Lievens from Belgium and Pradeep Ray from Australia - who consented to be on the Advisory team.

With the current number of members, both institutional and individual, from all over the country exceeding 600, the association is able to draw upon the experiences ranging from those in the medical field to the field of software engineering. The association justifiably prides itself on becoming a truly representative national body in all matters of medical informatics in India. A number of association members are on several advisory and taskforce groups for telemedicine and e-Health projects of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and Department of IT, Government of India and setting up healthcare informatics standards by the Bureau of Indian Standards. They were co-opted principally due to their association with IAMI.