IMIA Representative
Dr. Ronald Cornet, VMBI Chair

 

 

VMBI Website : Current VMBI Board members : VMBI meetings and events

 

VMBI, Society for Healthcare Informatics

Founded in 1970, the goal of the VMBI, the Dutch Society for Health Care Informatics,is to promote research, development, and applications in medicine and health care, and in the biological sciences. The Society is a meeting place for people in medical informatics in the broadest sense, i.e. physicians, nurses, informaticians, physicists, hospital administrators, and health care managers.

All hospitals in The Netherlands have systems installed to support administration, communication and patiënt care. In primary care, over 95% of GPs, all retail pharmacists, dentists, and the majority of physiotherapists have systems in use. An increasing number of systems are interconnected by EDI and networks. Development of computer-based patient records has much attention in R&D institutions. The Dutch professional medical societies play a major role in the promotion of information systems in healthcare.

Most universities offer some training in medical informatics as part of the curriculum. This dynamic activity is a very healthy environment for the VMBI.

The activities of the VMBI include meetings at research organizations throughout the country, annual two-day Conferences (called MIC, Medical Informatics Conference), together with the Belgian Society for Medical Informatics MIM, where about 600 people meet around lectures, workshops and a large exhibition, this conference is alternately held in The Netherlands and Belgium. The VMBI publishes an electronic magazine called I&Z (Informatie & Zorg, in english: Information & Care).

Over the past years, several IMIA Working Conferences have been organized in The Netherlands on subjects such as Telematics in Health Care, Hospital Information Systems, Electronic Patient Records in Medical Practice and Software Engineering in Health Care.

In 2006 the VMBI hosted the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) conference.  Since 2016, VMBI participates in the organization of study trips to HIMSS.