Minutes
Medical Informatics Section
Annual Business Meeting 2007-2008

Monday May 19, 2008
7:00-9:00 AM
Chicago

Welcome/Introductions
The meeting was called to order at 7:05 a.m by Janis Brown, Chair of MIS. Twenty-eight members were present for the meeting. Brown asked everyone to introduce themselves.

Approval of the 2007 Business Meeting Minutes
Kathy Kerdolff moved the 2007 Business Meeting Minutes be approved as written, Janis Brown seconded.

Chair's Report - Janis Brown
J. Brown reported that the section had a productive year; details are in the MIS annual report for 2007-08 which can be found on the MIS website.

Activities in brief:
A membership survey was distributed via Survey Monkey. One hundred twenty members responded. The key findings include: 30% want a morning meeting, many more wanted any other time as long as it doesn't overlap with any other meetings, and 73% want the section to begin using a blog for communications.

Task Force on Social Networking members Bart Ragon, Catherine Marlow and Janis Brown decided to have the Section start with a blog. They thought it better not to delve into any of the other social networking options at this time.

The Medical Informatics Section/MLA Career Development Grant had no recipient last year, so more effort was made this year to publicize its availability. Jane Blumenthal asked whether we have a specific person on the grant jury and Beth Layton suggested that members specifically request this grant jury when filling out the MLA volunteer form. Beth Whipple was charged with contacting MLA about the grant jury composition and how to make changes if necessary.

MIS donated $1000.00 to the Lindberg Research Fellowship, $3000.00 for the MIS/MLA Career Development Grant and has made a $1000.00 commitment to the proposed symposium on E-Patients: The Techno Cultural Revolution of Health Consumers.

MLA requested that MIS name a representative to AMIA; J. Brown volunteered since she already attends the AMIA meetings.

MLA Section Council organized a new event call the Section Shuffle this year. Many sections participated. MIS had a booth and used a tech trivia contest to attract participants. The entire event was considered quite successful. Winner of the Tech Trivia raffle was Elsa Anderson, NYU.

Lastly Brown recognized Kathy Kerdolff and Susan Lessick who are leaving the MIS Board and Lisa Traditi who is leaving the Professional Development Liaison/CE Committee Chair position. Laura Barrett presented a plaque to Janis Brown on behalf of the MIS membership, acknowledging and thanking her for her service as Chair of the Section.

Chair-Elect/Program Chair Report - Laura Barrett
L. Barrett mentioned the MIS programs for 2008; "Top Technology Trends: Bridge Today, Gone Tomorrow" and "Technologies in Teaching" and thanked everyone involved for their hard work.

Barrett also thanked Brown for initiating the membership survey. It included an opportunity for members to volunteer and resulted in new volunteers for section committees.

The following members will serve for 2008-2009:
Blog Committee Chair: Jaime Friel Blanck
Bylaws Chair: Marie Ascher
Government Relations Committee Co-Chairs: Douglas Varner and Brenda Seago
Membership Committee Co-Chairs: Sadie Honey and Jeanette de Richemond
Professional Development Liaison/CE Committee Chair: Kathel Dunn
Webmaster: Nic Cecchino

Treasurer's Report - Bette Sydelko
B. Sydelko went over the treasurer's report explaining income and expenses, particularly noting the purchase of a one year subscription to Survey Monkey which is available for any member of the Section to use. Sydelko is working with Ray Naegele on creating a model for treasurers of all sections to use to accomplish the financial business of their sections. Investigating how best to invest the section's money has been put on hold until the financial transactions with MLA are in place. A budget for the section needs to be developed; Sydelko will work on this after contacting the executive committee members for input. MIS needs to publicize the availability of SurveyMonkey and to ensure that surveys, especially elections are confidential before the MIS account is opened to members.

Nominating Committee Report - Kathy Kerdolff
The Nominating Committee used Survey Monkey for the voting process this year. It worked very well and was easy to do. Colleen Cuddy was elected for the Chair-Elect/Program Chair position. E. Stanley suggested checking into sharing the Survey Monkey software. B. Whipple volunteered to check into it with Section Council.

Membership Committee Report - Sadie Honey
S. Honey reported that the misbus listserv is up to date. There are 425 members, 32 joined MIS in 2008. B. Whipple assisted K. Kerdolff in recruiting qualified candidates to run for office. The Section Shuffle was considered successful with 44 people leaving their names at the MIS booth.

Web Report - Nic Cecchino
The website was converted to php this year so it will be easier to update. Submit ideas/changes for the website to Cecchino. Brown thanked Cecchino for his work on the website.

MIS HistoryTask Force - Kathy Kerdolff and Marcia Henry
M. Henry reported that they have been gathering information to include in the history. At this point the task force wonders about using a venue (blog or wiki) separate from the website to make the history more visible and dynamic. If all that is desired is an addition to the website, then they can finish the project very soon. Discussion ensued as to how we could highlight the history on the new MIS blog, and Molly Knapp suggested that it could be a spotlight in the blog once a month.

Section Council Report - Susan Lessick
Highlights:

• SIG conveners now get AHIP points, there are 17 SIGS, 3 were retired this year; 11 out of 17 have co-sponsored programs at the meeting this year
• NARS Section submitted a proposal to the Council that would allow non-MLA members to join sections; considerable discussion ensued including a reminder that MLA has an affiliated membership available at $100.00
• Credentialing Committee is looking at new ways to give AHIP points; examples include webmasters, participation as Doody's Core Titles selectors. Suggestions should go to Marie Asher
• Survey was sent out to MLA members who are not in sections
• C. Funk reported that 43% of MLA member belong to 1 section, 1250 are not members of any sections, 78% of the membership belong to sections. One can belong to up to 3 sections free if you have not been a member of a section before.
• Considerable discussion regarding attendance at Hawaii meeting and what different sections are doing to help members attend
• Changes to the composition of Section Council were presented by T. Reis; these require MLA bylaws changes which were presented to the membership at the business meeting where they passed. If the entire membership votes in favor, then the changes will take effect in January 2009. The changes will result in the section chair and past chair being the representatives to Section Council rather than having a separately elected representative and representative-elect. If passed, both Brown and Barrett will serve on Section Council beginning in January.

NEW BUSINESS
J. Brown led a discussion about the two MIS mailing lists - MedInfo and MISBus. MedInfo is populated by anyone who wants to join it, however, it has very little traffic. E. Stanley made a motion to shutdown MedInfo and B. Layton seconded; the motion passed. The MISBus list includes all MIS members, is updated regularly by the membership committee, and is the list that should be used for all email correspondence with MIS members.

Blog
Jamie Friel Blanck reported that she will be starting the blog and wants to recruit members to be bloggers. She suggested it be a public blog and will be looking at various blog software options including checking what MLA already has that we might use. Brown thanked Blanck for chairing the task force and for volunteering to get the blog up and running.

Travel grants
J. Brown led us in a discussion about whether MIS wants to consider developing a travel grant for meeting attendance that would be available every year, not just for Hawaii. Many chapters and sections are looking at ways to make sure MLA members can attend the Hawaii meeting. Brown suggested setting up a task force and everyone agreed that would be a good idea. Beth Whipple and Jeanne Burke volunteered to help Brown with this.

Programming ideas for MLA '09 - Colleen Cuddy
The Hawaii meeting will take place from May 15-20, 2009 with the theme iFusions. There will be four ninety-minute blocks for programming and the plan is to end the programming by 3 pm each day. October 6, 2009 is the deadline for submitting abstracts for contributed papers and posters. Brown suggested that it would be good to include more contributed paper sessions.

Possible ideas included these:

• Repeat the Top Technology Trends panel presentation
• Invitation from EMTS for something on simulations
• EMR, RHIOS, Google and personal health records (NLM has a joint task force on PHR's - where does the library fit with them?)
• Disaster preparedness - disaster informationists, information resources for first responders, what libraries can do for each other, EMR access during disasters
• Presentation about Jim Cimino's "Info Button"
• Federated search engines
• Possibility of participation in the proposed symposium on E-Patients: The Techno Cultural Revolution of Health Consumers
• Another symposium idea - medical informatics, where we are with it and what is our role - to include bioinformatics and biomedical informatics

After discussion, it was decided that Cuddy will take the ideas of simulations, EHRs, disaster planning and informatics forward to the planning meeting later this week along with the 3rd Annual Top Technology Trends panel.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:45am.

Respectfully submitted:
Bette Sydelko
MIS Secretary/Treasurer