Competencies for a well-trained biomedical and health informatics workforce.

Biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) is an evolving discipline that needs to accompany the progression of healthcare by constantly updating the curriculum of its workforce [1]. In developing countries, capacity building in BMHI can be used to address capacity shortfalls, by providing electronic information and training, especially in rural and underserved areas, with robust clinical data for informed decision making [2, 3]. In October 2008, the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Health and Medical Informatics Education Working Group (WG1) held a meeting entitled “Building Worldwide Capacity for the Health Informatics Workforce”. The meeting was hosted by the Department of Medical Informatics at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina. In addition to this event, the IMIA Latin American Countries (IMIA-LAC) organized the 3rd Latin American Meeting of Medical Informatics, the 2nd Argentinean Meeting of Medical Informatics, and the 2nd Argentinean Meeting of Nursing Informatics. As previous meetings organized by IMIA’s WG1 that had addressed important issues related to BMHI education [4], the goals of the Buenos Aires meeting were to provide both an exposition for identifying and harmonizing competencies and curricula for health and biomedical infor matics as well as provide a working meeting for IMIA WG1. There were more than 50 attendees from around the world and more than 20 papers were presented. There were several keynote presentations: