Objectives: On behalf of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), its Working Group 1 (WG1) addresses health and medical informatics education.
Methods: As part of its mission, WG1 developed recommendations for competencies, describing a three-dimension framework and defining learning outcomes.
Results: Officially approved by IMIA in 1999, the recommendations have been translated into seven languages. In 2001, WG1 charged a small group with updating the recommendations and consider the work undertaken by others to develop competencies. Additional work underway in support of the recommendations includes a literature review to help extract the fundamental competencies from the recommendations. To ensure the highest quality of input in the updated recommendations, WG1 is issuing a call for participation to the international informatics community.
Conclusions: Further work with the competencies will result in updated IMIA guidelines. These are expected to support the creation of a virtual university for health and medical informatics.