Welcome to the HISA health-mic SIG web site dedicated to the evolving specialty of Healthcare Management Informatics and Computing (health - mic - pronounced "health mike"). We also have a list serv available for interested professionals - please go to http://list.hisa.org.au/mailman/listinfo/health-mic if you are interested in joining. This SIG is designed to advance health management (vs clinical) informatics by acting as a forum for communication between technologists, vendors, researchers, clinicians and health managers with an interest in improving the management of healthcare organizations of all types through the better use of IT. Members come from across the Australasian region including Australia, New Zealand, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, as well as Europe and the US; to try and address the needs of Healthcare Management Informatics and Computing ("health mike").

Given that many of the major problems confronting the Australian (and international) healthcare industry are management problems rather than problems directly in clinical care provision - which is generally of a world leading standard in this country in particular- there seems to be a distinct lack of coordinated effort in this area. This is particularly the case when compared with the myriad of activity in the clinical informatics domain. The drivers for the establishment of such a group include the following questions I have asked myself in recent years having worked in this area:

• what are the key information requirements of healthcare managers be they GP practice managers or senior hospital executives?

• what are the decision support requirements of these same groups?

• what are the change management issues inherent in implementing management information solutions?

• how do we harness some of the groundbreaking work in scheduling, forecasting and other problem areas happening in pockets, often in research environments. In particular, how can such innovations be operationalized and /or incorporated into robust, integrated IT systems?

• how do we represent management concepts such as "occupancy" and "congestion" for example - in a way that IT practitioners and developers can incorporate them into practical IT systems - eg - through the use of archetypes (openEHR) or other kinds of modelling environments? Even more fundamentally are questions of common definitions of "occupancy", "congestion", "capacity" etc - some definitions exist, but how widespread is agreement around them?

• how do we engage funders sufficiently for them to see that management, and by inference patient care (eg -through improved access), can be improved signifcantly (and in particular can become more evidence based) through the utilization of relevant management technologies?

• how do we ensure that HR, finance, PAS and predictive systems can work in an interoperable fashion given the complex and intertwined relationships between issues such as staffing, finance and bed management in healthcare organizations?

This group is an accessible forum for interested people dedicated to advancing these issues. If you think anyone you know may be interested in joining the group- please don't hesitate to put them in touch with me at bainchri@optusnet.com.au