Selecting venues for AMIA events and conferences: guiding ethical principles

Christoph U Lehmann; Kate Fultz Hollis; Carolyn Petersen; Paul R DeMuro; Vignesh Subbian; Ross Koppel; Anthony E Solomonides; Eta S Berner; Eric C Pan; Julia Adler-Milstein; Kenneth W Goodman

doi:10.1093/jamia/ocac073

Selecting venues for AMIA events and conferences: guiding ethical principles

J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2022 Jul 12;29(8):1319-1322. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocac073.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Clinical Informatics Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
² Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA.
³ Department of Artificial Intelligence and Informatics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
⁴ Nossaman LLP, Austin, Texas, USA.
⁵ College of Engineering, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
⁶ Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
⁷ Research Institute, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
⁸ Center for Health Informatics for Patient Safety/Quality, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
⁹ Center for Healthcare Delivery Research and Evaluation, Westat, Rockville, Maryland, USA.
¹⁰ Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
¹¹ Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, USA.

Abstract

A discussion and debate on the American Medical Informatics Association's (AMIA) Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Working Group listserv in 2021 raised important issues related to a forthcoming conference in Texas. Texas had recently enacted a restrictive abortion law and restricted voting rights. Several AMIA members advocated for a boycott of the state and the scheduled conference. The discussion led the AMIA Board of Directors to request that the organization's Ethics Committee provide general guidance for principle-based venue selection. This document recommends overarching principles for the venue selection for future AMIA events and conferences. Discussions by the AMIA Board, the Ethics Committee, and the ELSI Working Group informed these recommendations, and this document on guiding principles was approved by the AMIA Board of Directors in April 2022.

Keywords: biomedical informatics; conference; conference planning; conference requirements; right to science; scientific freedom.

MeSH terms

Medical Informatics*
Texas
United States