MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Members and Subscribers,

I am honored to serve as President of BC Health Information Management Professionals Society for 2019/20. Serving on the Board of Directors as your Vice President/ Conference Chair last year, and as your Treasurer for the two years prior led me to the opportunity to participate on the Partnership Committee that explored and mapped the next phase of BCHIMPS. The outcome of several discussions and healthy debates ultimately resulted in the decision to move forward in securing the future of BCHIMPS as the BC Chapter of HIMSS. Shaina Reid, in her role as Vice President, is taking on the BCHIMPS lead role for the committee with a focus to complete the required steps by the end of 2019 in order for BCHIMPS for to act as the HIMSS BC Chapter.

Our educational symposiums continue to be highly sold out events with over 200 delegates for the 2018-2019 symposiums, necessitating a change in venue with expanded capacity. Our events create value for our Members, guests, and sponsors and attract high caliber speakers, including, but not limited to, industry leaders, public and private sector executives, clinicians and health informatics professionals. Feedback from delegates, speakers and sponsors has been extremely positive over the years, but we continue to strive to be the best and incorporate delegate feedback into future events. To enable continuing success we will continue to build out our two symposiums each year with a target of 300-350 delegates, increase corporate level memberships, continue to enhance board documentation and procedures, build greater awareness of BCHIMPS in the health informatics community, and continue to enhance the BCHIMPS experience for our Members.

Our 2019 AGM held May 1st was a great success and this year included remote participation by Members from Kelowna, Prince George, and Victoria thanks to our hosts. We also added three new Board Members: Andy Yngreso, Nancy Gabor, and Rachel Barker. We thank our retiring Board Members, Havi Parker-Sutton and Rosemary Gray. We are also delighted to announce Shaina Reid as our new Vice President and thank Brigitte Mettler for her work over the past year as she moves into the role of Past President.

Our 2019-20 BCHIMPS Board structure is:

• Anushka Premji-Osman, President
• Shaina Reid, Vice President
• Brigitte Mettler, Past President
• Jennifer Charters, Secretary
• Brian Lefebvre, Treasurer
• Tiffany Chui, Conference Chair
  
• Rachel Barker, Director Social Media & Communications
• Andy Yngreso, Director Membership Engagement
• Ingrid Collet, Director Governance, Accreditation & Evaluation
• Nancy Gabor, Director Networking & Events
• Oliver Thompson, Director Sponsorship & Stakeholder Engagement

Anushka Premji-Osman