AMIA's New Statement Of Vision, Mission, and Strategic Goals

During 2000, the AMIA Board of Directors was engaged in a strategic planning process to re-examine the vision, mission, and goals of the association. As a comparatively new association founded just over a decade ago, this was only the second major strategic planning process for the association, the first having occurred in the early 1990s. The resulting document includes a new vision and mission statement, a set of six major goals to guide the activities of the association, and a set of more specific shorter-term objectives under each of the six goals. The Board examined the overall objectives at some length and identified those it felt to be of particularly high priority in guiding the activities of the association over the next two to three years. The full listing of the objectives can be found on the AMIA Web site at www.amia.org. The purpose of the discussion of objectives below is to highlight those that the Board identified as being the highest priorities in the near term. The role of a vision statement in a strategic plan is to put forward an organization's highest aspirations. It does not address the whys and hows, or the details of implementation, but rather states what the organization sees itself as, and what it wants the world to perceive it to be. For AMIA, this is succinctly stated in the Board's vision for the association: The American Medical Informatics Association is the premier organization to advance discovery and innovation in the use of information in health and biomedicine. This vision is the focus against which the success of the association's programs, products, and planning efforts is ultimately measured. Any of the organization's activities should be justifiable in terms of effectively working to help make and keep AMIA on track toward realizing this vision. …