The American Medical Informatics Association has appointed Amit Acharya, B.D.S., Ph.D., executive director of Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, to its newly-established Health Informatics Certification Commission.
The 14-member commission is charged with finalizing and overseeing implementation of AMIA health informatics certification. The commission will be responsible for eligibility, examination development and recertification requirements.
Commission members bring a broad range of perspectives and significant expertise to their work. They represent individuals who have training in nursing, health informatics, public health, pharmacy, medicine, dentistry and nutrition. Commission members are at different career stages and work in health care delivery organizations/systems, universities, industry, federal agencies and a community health organization.
“Biomedical informatics as a profession and AMIA as my professional home has served as a catalyst in my career and has given me so much. Now it is time for me to give back to my profession," said Dr. Acharya. “I am very excited to see health informatics being recognized as an important health care profession and this certification process supported by AMIA will not only recognize the individuals from multiple backgrounds as informatics specialists, but will also draw future workforce to our profession."
The commission's work will expand health informatics certification opportunity for professionals and is a complement to the clinical informatics subspecialty certification.
“The multidisciplinary structure of the certification commission reflects the collaborative team approach that is the essence of informatics," said commission co-chair Cathy Ivory, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The range of commission member perspectives and experiences will contribute to a certification program that advances the field and supports individual professionals."
Dr. Acharya has held several national leadership roles at American Dental Education Association and American Medical Informatics Association's Dental Informatics Group. He also served as the chairman of the clinical informatics sub-committee of the American Dental Associations' Standards Committee for Dental Informatics.
As a general dental surgeon and a computer scientist with expertise in biomedical informatics, Dr. Acharya's research focus has been around integration of medical and dental data, clinical and research information systems, architecture of electronic health records, clinical decision supports and investigating the oral-systemic disease relationship.
The Health Informatics Certification Commission membership also includes Justin Starren, M.D., Ph.D., Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and former director of the Research Institute's Biomedical Informatics Research Center. View the complete list of commission members.