International Journal of Medical Informatics

Official journal of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) and IMIA.

The International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI) provides an international medium for the dissemination of original results and interpretative reviews in the field of medical informatics. As a leading international venue for health informatics research, IJMI has moved from concept to clinic, rigorously evaluated when deployed at scale in real-world settings. The journal serves a global audience with cross-national, comparative evidence on informatics performance across diverse regulatory, linguistic, cultural, and healthcare system contexts.

The journal focuses on the design, development, integration, implementation, deployment, evaluation, and application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in healthcare. Submissions are expected to prioritize implementation fidelity, measurable clinical/population impact, equity, sustainability, and long-term governance over algorithmic novelty alone.

IJMI seeks high-impact contributions in several priority areas, including AI implementation and governance, interoperability at scale, clinical implementation science, digital health equity, policy and workforce development, clinical decision support systems, health management information systems, interoperability across healthcare information systems and services, and human factors, safety, and experience.

These priorities reflect the journal’s commitment to publishing rigorous and consequential informatics research that advances patient care, clinician well-being, health equity, and system performance worldwide.

In scope:

• Health information systems, including national/international registries, hospital and clinical information systems, electronic medical/health records, consumer informatics, public/population health informatics, digital ecosystems, terminologies and standards, human-computer interaction, user adoption and acceptance, systems integration, and interoperability—in support of patient care delivery through ICT.

• Clinical decision support systems and AI, systems that employ heuristics, algorithms, data structures, statistical methods, decision theory, protocol-based reasoning, and artificial intelligence, including knowledge discovery techniques. Studies focusing solely on AI, ML, deep learning, or large language models will only be considered when integrated into clinical systems demonstrating impact by robust external validation and comprehensive clinical outcome evaluation.

• Education and workforce, ICT-based educational programs, digital literacy initiatives, and informatics training including organizational frameworks, curricula design, economic evaluations, social and clinical impact assessments, and ethical/cost-benefit analyses of healthcare applications.

• Evidence synthesis, literature reviews (systematic, scoping, integrative, critical, meta-analytic) that contribute to clinical informatics knowledge base through the evaluation of ICT applications (e.g., telehealth, AI, cybersecurity, electronic health/patient records) in clinical practice.

• Safety and policy, research addressing patient safety, data privacy, security, confidentiality, legal/regulatory frameworks, policy processes, system maturity models, and ICT governance in healthcare delivery.

As an international journal in medical informatics, the publication prioritizes studies that apply rigorous methodologies enabling global researchers to replicate, validate, and build upon ICT applications in healthcare. Contributions from researchers worldwide are welcomed, especially those demonstrating the clinical significance and practical implementation of informatics solutions.

Out of scope :

• Studies whose primary outcome is technical model performance (e.g., AUC, F1, precision/recall) without prospective clinical deployment, validated patient or provider outcomes, or a documented Clinical Translation Roadmap detailing a specific pathway to real-world application.

• Single-site studies without a transferability analysis, implementation framework, or explicit discussion of generalizability — unless conducted in under-represented settings where the contextual contribution itself is the primary scholarly value.

• Bibliometric, scientometric, or citation analysis studies.

• Conceptual models, frameworks, or architecture designs without implementation results or empirical evaluation.

• Standalone genetics, genomics, or biomarker studies without informatics implementation or clinical translation.

• Medical image analysis focusing solely on mathematical modeling, algorithmic development, or technical performance without empirical clinical applications or patient outcomes.

• Methodological studies or algorithm performance evaluations without clinical implementation or patient impact assessment.

• Studies whose primary data source is non-peer-reviewed social media or consumer video content, unless the platform itself is integral to the informatics intervention under evaluation.

• Stand-alone consumer applications without a predefined evaluation protocol, validated outcomes, and linkage to clinical or public health workflows.