The evolution of the IAIMS: lessons for the next decade.

The Integrated Academic (Advanced) Information Management System (IAIMS) initiative emerged in the early 1980s to respond to trends in biomedical information, transfer and access, and to identify the implications for health sciences libraries. Three recurrent themes have emerged as being essential to the creation of IAIMs: changing the paradigm; redirecting expenditures to build reuseable infrastructure; and working across cultural boundaries. An IAIMS penetrates an organization in four stages: from creating awareness; through development of foundation infrastructure; through integration as an extra effort; to integration as a byproduct of organizational structure and information architecture. Extension of the IAIMS to support a regional area is a natural fifth stage that reapplies the processes of the first four stages and re-uses the infrastructure that has been built within the cooperating organizations. Area IAIMSs have the potential to transform biomedicine by enabling new paradigms for manpower development and publication of information.

IAIMS: an interview with Dick West. Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems. Interview by Joan S Ash and Frances E Johnson.

Richard T. West, IAIMS (Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems) Program Officer at the National Library of Medicine for 13 years, reflects on the origin, development, effectiveness, and future of IAIMS efforts. He dwells on the changes that have taken place as the concept of IAIMS has evolved from a technology-based to an organization-based level of integration. The role of IAIMS in patient care, education, and research is discussed, along with the role of the librarian in the implementation of IAIMS programs. He sees a need for training for librarians, informaticians, and others in preparation for these efforts and for the development of academic reward systems that encourage them. He expresses a desire for those working in information technology in hospitals to gain a clearer understanding of IAIMS, because the concept fits hospitals as well as academic health science centers. He exhorts informaticians to bring to reality the futuristic fantasies of a new information world.

Integrated Advanced Medical Information Systems (IAIMS): payoffs and problems.

IAIMS (Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems) is an initiative to improve the access to information needed to provide patient care, health-oriented education, biomedical research, and management of large medical center environments. This paper will review the goals, history, and accomplishments of the IAIMS initiative. Shortcomings and frustrations, lessons learned, and the future of such initiatives will also be discussed.

Integrated advanced information management systems: a twenty-year history at the University of Cincinnati.

The University of Cincinnati (UC) has been active in the National Library of Medicine's Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS) program since IAIMS' inception in 1984. UC received IAIMS planning and modeling grants in the 1980s, spent the 1990s practicing its own form of "iaims" and refining its vision, and, in May 2003, received an IAIMS operations grant in the first round of awards under "the next generation" program. This paper discusses the history of IAIMS at UC and describes the goals, methods, and strategies of the current IAIMS program. The goals of UC's IAIMS program are to: improve teaching effectiveness by improving the assessment of health professional students and residents in laboratory and clinical teaching and learning environments; improve the ability of researchers, educators, and students to acquire and apply the knowledge required to be more productive in genomic research and education; and increase the productivity of researchers and administrators in the pre-award, post-award, and compliance phases of the research lifecycle.

Indianapolis I3: the third generation Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems.

In 2001, the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care and the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) began an IAIMS planning effort to create a vision and a tactical plan for the first Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS) implementation to cross a large area and include unaffiliated institutions. A number of elements made this planning effort unique. Among these elements were the existence of a network infrastructure that supported the Indianapolis Network for Patient Care, the existence of a mature medical informatics program at the Regenstrief Institute, and the existence of a wide-area knowledge network fostered by the IUSM libraries. However, the leadership for a strong information technology role in the IUSM that could promote collaboration in support of education and research across the diverse Indianapolis hospital systems had been lacking. By bringing together various groups, each with a commitment to improve health care quality and public health across the Indianapolis metropolitan area, regardless of individual institutional affiliation, the strategic directions for I3-Indianapolis IAIMS Initiative have been defined and the foundations for a third generation IAIMS construct have been laid in Indianapolis, Indiana.