The AMIA annual Symposium, Nov 15 – 19 in Atlanta was a great meeting in a great location. With roughly 2300 attendees it was big enough to make an impact but small enough to fit well within the space we had without people being too spread out, allowing for nice networking mixed with great content. I would describe the public health presence as “small but mighty” and I was happy to see some public health presence I haven’t seen at the AMIA symposium before, showing the need for us to all come together at these challenging times.
This year was supposed to have a significant public health focus, and being located in Atlanta, we had high hopes for many of our CDC colleagues to join us. Unfortunately, only a few managed to be back at work in time and ready to attend a conference after the government shut-down and while I was very excited and happy to see the ones who were there, the many who couldn’t make it were sorely missed. It was a poignant reminder of the challenging times for public health. Nevertheless, it felt like we had more public health content than in previous years, and the public health sessions I attended had great panels and engaged audiences and sometimes lively conversations during the Q&A segments. The quality of the discourse affirmed the crucial role informatics plays in the public health sector.
The public health workgroup meeting was held over lunch on Sunday. It was attended by over 50 people – the largest attendance I have seen in this workgroup in a very long time! We spent some of the time discussing how we should re-engage this group, what our focus should be moving forward, and how to build on this momentum. I am encouraging all my fellow AMIA public health friends to join this group and help make it into the powerful forum we want it to be.
It was also encouraging to see Eileen Koski from the AMIA public policy committee attending both the public health workgroup meeting and many of the public health sessions, and hearing her affirming the need for the public policy committee to help public health and public health informatics in these challenging times.
Overall the 2025 Annual Symposium had a lot of great content and I think the closing plenary summed it up very nicely with the “informatics year in review”.