IMIA accreditation is in addition to the more extensive but frequently traditional accreditation procedures carried out within the home country. Local accreditation committees may not have enough expertise in BMHI to judge the programs in terms of depth or whether the program is of comparable standard to international programs. IMIA accreditation is designed to ensure that basic competencies in BMHI are covered by the program. The accreditation procedure uses the IMIA recommendations for benchmarking. Accreditation provides a competitive advantage to the program and provides students and (potential) collaborators of the institution insight into the quality of the program.

Because of the existence of local or national accreditation bodies, accreditation provided by IMIA focusses on ensuring that the contents of the curriculum match the objectives of the program and that the programs meet an international standard for BMHI education.