Towards a Maturity Model for National-Level and Regional-Level Health Informatics Associations

Health informatics (HI) associations within countries and across regions play important roles in advancing the field. To be most effective, these associations need relevant policies, procedures, people, and infrastructure to support key activities. As HI associations have emerged, especially in the developing world, wide variability can be observed in their organization and operations. No clear reference guide exists to support establishment of new associations, and existing ones lack mechanisms to track progress and maturity. At the same time, regional and international associations, like the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), cannot uniformly assess national-level ones to ensure they meet some minimal criteria for membership. In this paper, we propose a HI association maturity (HIAM) model to guide and gauge associations' performance across multiple dimensions, including Policies & Governance, Procedures, Infrastructure, Activities and Impact. A case example of Uganda is used to demonstrate application of the maturity model.