The Australian health information management profession: Journal history

摘要

As the Health Information Management Association of Australia Ltd (HIMAA) celebrates the 70th anniversary of the medical record profession in Australia in 2019, it is appropriate to share the history of two of the Association's greatest assets: the Health Information Management Journal (HIMJ) and HIM-Interchange (HIM-I). The history of these two journals can be traced back to 1970, when Betty James (Medical Record Librarian (MRL) In-Charge, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) Sydney) suggested the Australian Federation of Medical Record Librarians (AFMRL) contact a "hospital administration journal" to see if they would be interested in publishing papers from the Fourth Australian Conference on Medical Records held in Melbourne (October, 1966). This resulted in selected papers being published in Hospital and Health Care Journal, Volume 1. With the success of this initiative, the AFMRL Council was fired with enthusiasm and published a National Newsletter. Barbara Anderson (nee Reilly; New South Wales (NSW)) was appointed Editor, with Joan Caelli (Victoria) and Phyllis Watson (NSW) Liaison Officers. Without professional assistance, the first Newsletter was prepared on a stencil and reproduced using an old machine in a small room behind the Medical Record Department of the RPAH in Sydney! The President, Judith Young, in the first Issue published in February 1971, asked all members to support the Newsletter by submitting articles, letters, ideas, positions vacant and suggestions to the Editor on any subject related to the medical record profession. Although simple, the Newsletter was a great success. It continued to be prepared on a stencil, folded, placed in envelopes by a small group of volunteers, stamped and posted to all AFMRL members. It was labour-intensive and expensive to produce (Watson, 2013).