On behalf of the CHIMA Board of Directors, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our members, partners, and the CHIMA team for their support and unwavering commitment to the health information management (HIM®) profession.

This past year was filled with positive change and a renewed sense of community within the profession. We have advanced progress this year in tangible ways, from building engagement through our chapters to launching new professional designations that will help shape our profession well into the future. I would like to extend a warm welcome those who have succeeded in becoming part of our profession.

As you begin your journey, I encourage you to get involved with CHIMA. We have opened nominations to our national board of directors and for the SK Chapter Chair position at this time. Our chapter committees across the country will be looking for volunteers throughout the year, and we encourage members to get involved. It is with this level of engagement that we are able to advance our goals at CHIMA. Volunteering to help build your profession is incredibly rewarding, and by doing so you get more value out of your relationship with the organization.

As we turn our eye to 2020, we continue to build on our strategic plan. Our national conference in Winnipeg, which will take place October 5-6, is a purposeful view of health information as it relates to collecting and curating the information of Canadians. Tickets go on sale in March. The keynotes, conversations with colleagues from across the country, and touchstone moments of how information informs care will be front and centre. Discussions on health equity — including topic areas in data quality, enabling the EHR, information governance, and privacy — will all be surfaced from different viewpoints across the health information practice, whether you play a role in primary care, decision support, or are working to evolve the bedrock of our profession in records management and classification and coding. Collecting and curating quality health information is the lifeblood of world-class care, and we are the profession that safeguards and stewards its leadership in Canada.

Thank you for your continued investment and engagement in the HIM profession, and we look forward to continued success throughout 2020.

Leah Anscombe, MA, CHIM
Chair, CHIMA Board of Directors