About this site; Disclaimer and Privacy Policy
The following information describes the purposes of IMIA’s website, privacy policy, and other related materials. Some of this is provided specifically for compliance with the Health On the Net Foundation’s HONcode (http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/) and congruent with the IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information Professionals.

If you have any questions about, or if you feel that IMIA is not following, the stated privacy policy, IMIA’s website practices, or any other aspect of best practice, you can contact us by e-mail at imia[at]imia-services.org or through the postal address, email link, or telephone number as given on the ‘Contact Us’ page.

Purpose of this website
The IMIA Internet website – http://www.imia.org (also accessible at http://www.imia-medinfo.org/) – is a service that is intended to provide useful information for IMIA members, health and biomedical informatics professionals, and other interested persons, in furtherance of IMIA’s mission as an international not-for-profit organisation registered under Swiss law (Article 60, Swiss Civil Code).

The primary purpose is to provide information about IMIA, its Member Societies and other categories of member, and about their activities, congruent with IMIA’s mission, vision, purpose, goals and objectives. In addition, the site provides information about many other aspects of health informatics and biomedical informatics, and links to other sources of information in these domains.

The primary audience of this site is IMIA’s constituent Member Societies (and the health and biomedical informatics professionals who are individual subscribing members of those societies), its Institutional Member organisations (and where appropriate the individual members of those organisations), its Regional and Affiliate Members, and its individual Corresponding Members. In addition to these organisations, and individual health and biomedical informatics professionals, congruent with IMIA’s mission and vision, the material provided is designed to raise awareness of health and biomedical informatics among those who may be interested in the domain, including, but not limited to scientists, researchers, students of health and biomedical informatics, vendors, developers, and consultants.

While it is IMIA’s intent to always present accurate information, for documents and information available from this site, IMIA does not warrant or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed. Care has been taken in the compilation of this website and to ensure that the information provided by IMIA, or provided to IMIA for inclusion on this website, is accurate and current. The statements contained on this site are believed to be correct. If you are aware that any of the information here contains mistakes or needs updating, please tell us. Reference in this website to any specific commercial products, process, service, manufacturer, or company does not constitute its endorsement or recommendation by IMIA.

What this website does not do
This website does NOT provide any form of health or medical information.

Who maintains this site
This website is maintained by the IMIA Office/Secretariat. The responsible person, to whom all queries should be directed, is the IMIA CEO. All material is added to the site directly by the IMIA Office staff, or as directed or delegated by the IMIA Office. Material content about IMIA Member Societies and individuals, such as society officers, is provided by society. Each IMIA Member is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the materials provided, and for providing timely and accurate updates to information.

The IMIA website is generally checked daily. We aim to answer any queries within 24 hours, and most are actually dealt with within 6 hours.

Links to other sites
At certain places on this IMIA website, live links to other Internet addresses and websites can be accessed. IMIA does not endorse, approve, certify or control these external Internet addresses and does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy, timeliness or correct sequencing of information located at such addresses.

Privacy Policy
IMIA respects and protects the privacy of individual website users. We do not collect personal information about you when you visit our website unless you choose to provide that information to us. IMIA does not disclose to third parties any information that may be associated with a particular individual gathered as a result of interaction with the IMIA website.

IMIA automatically collects a limited amount of information about the use of its website, primarily for statistical purposes. Of the information we learn about you from your visit to the IMIA Web site, we store only the following: 1.) the IP address from which you access the Internet, 2.) the date and time, 3.) the Internet address of the Web site from which you linked directly to our site, 4.) the name of the file or the words you searched, and 5.) the browser used to access our site. This information is used to measure the number of visitors to the various sections of our site and identify system performance or problem areas. It is kept secure and confidential and is only used by site staff. IMIA periodically deletes its web logs. IMIA does not provide any of this information to any third parties.

For most visitors to the IMIA website, who visit as ‘anonymous users’, we do not use ‘cookies’ (small files that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk allowing our server to remember specific information about your session). IMIA does assign a cookie to each registered user, so we can identify that user each time he or she returns to the website, and to make it easier to use the dynamic features of these Web pages. We use session cookies for certain functions. You can set your browser to disable cookies or prompt you before a cookie is accepted.

Personally Provided Information
If you choose to provide us with personal information by sending an email, or by filling out a form with your personal information and submitting it through our website, we use that information to respond to your message and to help us provide you with information or material that you request. If provided, personally identifiable address and email information is maintained in a database that is regularly purged. IMIA does not rent its member mailing addresses to other organizations that provide educational or other services that are deemed to be of interest to our members.

Information on IMIA Members that appears in, for example, Member Society profile pages, is used as provided by those member organisations or individuals, and used with their permission.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, IMIA’s Web site practices, you can contact us by e-mail at imia@imia-services.org

Disclosure of funding sources
The IMIA website is funded entirely from IMIA’s general revenues (primarily membership fees, and conference and publications income). It does not receive any funding from advertisements, sponsorship or other sources. All of IMIA’s funding and accounting is overseen by a robust mechanism including the use of independent external accountants, and Financial Review Committee appointed by and answerable to the IMIA Board and General Assembly. Day to day responsibility for finances is overseen by the IMIA Office.

Opinions
The opinions expressed by contributors to designated areas of the website (for example, news items) are solely those of the individual writers and authors and do not reflect the opinions of IMIA, the members of the IMIA Board or individual committees, task forces or working groups.

Copyright
The contents of all material available on this website are copyrighted by IMIA unless otherwise indicated. All rights are reserved by IMIA and content may not be reproduced, downloaded, disseminated, published or transferred in any form or by any means, except with the prior written permission of IMIA. Members of IMIA may download certain pages or other content for their own use, consistent with the mission and purpose of IMIA and as indicated throughout the site. However, any reproduced material should contain proper acknowledgement of IMIA as the originator and the IMIA website as the source.

Advertising Policy
This website does not host paid advertisement banners and sponsored text links. In places, there are linked images that are designated ‘advertisements’ in the taxonomy of the site software. These are complementary links provided to the web sites of IMIA members and/or other organisations whose events and activities IMIA believes are congruent with IMIA’s purposes and philosophy, and that IMIA has agreed to provide as a service to its members and to other visitors to the IMIA web site. The general conditions (above) that apply to all external links we provide also apply to these links.

Policy Updates
From time to time, we may use provided information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in the current version of our privacy policy. If our information practices change we will immediately post any adjustments to our policy on this website. This will serve as your notification of these changes. If you are concerned about how your information is used, please bookmark this page and check back periodically.