From the National Office

FROM THE

NATIONAL OFFICE

October is the month of our annual conference. The HIMAA Conference Committee is this year delivering our first ever virtual conference. Efforts of the committee have been significant due to COVID-19 challenges; including an initial uncertainty on the opportunity to even host a conference (meaning we had a much later than usual start to planning) and challenges engaging healthcare professional speakers- who are all facing unprecedented time and availability challenges. This year’s conference will be run in a brand new format and whilst there’s no doubt you will gain significant professional value from the speakers and sessions, the dinner will be an event in its own right. We apologise for the later than usual program finalisation but watch this space indeed!

Managing Health Information Privacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations and Perspectives from Around the Globe

Our very own Sharon Campbell (BSc.HIM, MHlthAdmin) has collaborated with a number of international HIMP from America, India and Canada to co-author a paper regarding the rapid introduction of new technology to support the extraordinary contact-tracing and populationwide surveillance measures envisaged in fighting COVID-19. Sharon notes “few countries have frameworks in place. Of note, health data privacy practices regarding COVID-19 data are constantly changing as data sharing challenges arise. There are more questions that arose during our review and this will require further study in the future. Although we all had different experiences and perspectives there were a lot of similarities when reviewed”.

You will find this fantastic article here: https://ifhima.org/ managing-health-information-privacy-during-the-covid19-pandemic/ IFHIMA News

A/Professor Kerryn Butler-Henderson has stepped down as Australia’s National IFHIMA Director. HIMAA thanks Kerryn for her time in this role. Vicki Bennett has now taken on the role.

From beginnings in 1955, IFHIMA has supported Health Information Management professionals across the globe and has continued to drive the vision of ‘a healthy world enabled by quality health information’. Ensuring the work continues for this vision into the future, a new strategic plan was launched for 2020 – 2025. At the core are four Strategic Pillars: Member Engagement and Growth, Education, Training and Research, Developing Nations, and Strategic partnerships. An operation plan to increase revenues, a strong marketing and communication strategy, sound infrastructure, and technical and administrative support also constitute the foundations of the strategic plan.

Access the Strategic Plan 2020 – 2025 and learn more about the initiatives via: https://ifhima.org/strategicinitiatives/

Everything you ever wanted to know about an Impact Factor but were afraid to ask.

The Editorial Board spends considerable time on efforts to improve the impact factor (IF) for the Health Information Management Journal (HIMJ). The current HIMJ IF, relating to 2019 data, is 1.833, the highest it has ever been. But what does this mean? The IF provides a way to rank and assess journals, representing the frequency with which an average article in a journal has been cited in a given year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations of articles published in a given year to the total number of articles published in the journal during the previous two years. The IF is used as a proxy measure of the ‘importance’, ‘reach’ or standing of a journal (https:// clarivate.com/essays/impact-factor/). A journal must be indexed in Web of Science to have an impact factor, meaning it meets 28 “quality criteria” which measure it’s scholarly content and publication process. The fact that not only does HIMJ have an impact factor, but that it is improving over time reflects positively on HIMAA and its members.