Health Informatics 2009 Conference Meeting, 9 Dec, ANU, Canberra

Peter Croll, Chair of the Health Informatics Conference 2009 (HIC 09), will be in Canberra Tuesday and Wednesday. I was asked to help put him in touch with people at the Australian national University people to discuss participation and keynote speakers. Peter will be visiting me at my ANU office, Tuesday morning, 9
December 2008, should others in Canberra with an interest in health informatics wish to join us. Alternatively you may wish to contact Peter directly. Last year's conference, HIC08 was in Melbourne. The draft program for this year is appended.

I don't know much about Health Informatics, but occasionally review
papers for the electronic Journal of Health Informatics. I now have a personal interest, as I ended up an emergency patient in Canberra Hospital a few weeks ago. ;-)

Here is the text of the description of the conference I was sent:

HIC09 Conference Description

Healthcare is a deeply personal and often intensely compelling endeavour, driving practitioners and technologists to ceaselessly explore for improvements in the delivery of care. Its use of information and communication technology often sits at the current limits of the domain. More than any other IT segment, this discipline intertwines the technological with the human in a way that has led to stunning innovations and intensely practical outcomes.

"Frontiers of Health Informatics- Redefining Healthcare", seeks to capture this diversity of achievement in science, medicine and information technology. Importantly, it looks at the practical systems and process issues that need to be addressed now, to meet the challenges of the future.

HIC'09 is built around four key information technology themes that are driving change and innovation in Australian healthcare. Each theme looks to analyse the leading edge technologies that are being implemented and the opportunities they create.

• Personalised medicine and bioinforamtics
• Discovering new knowledge in biomedicine
• Applying knowledge in biomedicine: Informatics role in translational medicine
• Biomedical systems: delivering personalised medicine
• Next generation electronic health records.
• Integrating new health data sets
• Data visualising and data management
• Personal health records
• Privacy, security and confidentiality
• Healthcare collaboration and outreach
• Monitoring systems
• Assistive Technologies
• Smart Homecare environments
• Telehealth, telecare and video conferencing and virtual reality environments
• Information innovations to support healthcare communities and social networking
• Knowledge and education
• Preventative healthcare and fitness
• Chronic disease management
• Building wellness: engaging and supporting the health consumer
• Population monitoring and preventative health
• Options for innovative care delivery
• Genes and proteins to predict and prevent ill-health

Building on HIC08's theme of "The Person in the Centre", Frontiers of Health Informatics will showcase the technologies and processes that are required to deliver the patient centric healthcare that was so clearly articulate. As an integral part of the program, the conference, through its panels and workshops will deliver a final position statement on the role of technology in redefining the
delivery of healthcare in Australia.