The Saudi Health Information Management Association (SHIMA) is a nonprofit association representing health information, health informatics and clinical coding professionals in Saudi Arabia and the region. Licensed by the National Center for Non-Profit Sector (NCNP) under the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS). SHIMA is a member of the International Federation of Health Information Management Associations (IFHIMA) since 2016. Since its establishment, SHIMA has been heavily involved in serving the healthcare sector apart of the greater goal, which is achieving sustainable development for the association and for our beloved country. Our goal in the association is to promote and develop the professions of health information management and health informatics by supporting continuous professional development of healthcare practitioners. We cover a wide range of topics related to the areas of health information management and health informatics, such as clinical coding, Improve clinical documentation, data analysis, and the electronic health records. Throughout the way, SHIMA went through several developmental phases in which there were many accomplishments within the association in the search for achieving its larger goals in HIM and Health Informatics.
Many initiatives and activities held by SHIMA over the past few years, the most prominent among them was hosting the IFHIMA 19th Congress in 2019 and celebrating the IFHIMA Golden Jubilee in Dubai. SHIMA also targets raising awareness among the public about the concept of health information security, privacy and confidentiality. SHIMA aims to encouraging the writing and translation of books and articles to serve the purpose of establishing a scientific database for HIM and relevant fields. Furthermore, SHIMA promotes developing skillsets of HIM professionals across the Kingdom and the GCC through providing incentives and scholarships for outstanding students.
SHIMA assures its consistent commitment to making more efforts to serving the nation through promoting cooperation between both public and private sectors. Supporting communication between key stakeholders keeping track of national and international updates and seeking the goal of creating a reliable environment in healthcare sector all of which will have a significant impact over healthcare field advancement to meet the 2030 vision goals in healthcare. SHIMA recently won the bid to host the IFHIMA 21st Congress in Riyadh in Nov 2025, where we will be welcoming the world to Riyadh and proudly highlighting Saudi Arabia’s digital health advancements and the speedy progression in health information management and health informatics in the region.