Integrated advanced information management systems: a twenty-year history at the University of Cincinnati

The University of Cincinnati (UC) has been active in the National Library of Medicine's Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS) program since IAIMS' inception in 1984. UC received IAIMS planning and modeling grants in the 1980s, spent the 1990s practicing its own form of "iaims" and refining its vision, and, in May 2003, received an IAIMS operations grant in the first round of awards under "the next generation" program. This paper discusses the history of IAIMS at UC and describes the goals, methods, and strategies of the current IAIMS program. The goals of UC's IAIMS program are to: improve teaching effectiveness by improving the assessment of health professional students and residents in laboratory and clinical teaching and learning environments; improve the ability of researchers, educators, and students to acquire and apply the knowledge required to be more productive in genomic research and education; and increase the productivity of researchers and administrators in the pre-award, post-award, and compliance phases of the research lifecycle.