With the pervasive influence of information technology, many countries are now aggressively applying this technology to the management of health data and patient care. In view of the strong progress that has been made in this field among countries in the Asia Pacific in recent years, and recognizing the importance of the Asia Pacific as a region in the forefront global scientific, economic and cultural growth and development, the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) launched the Asia Pacific initiative at its General Assembly in October 1993.

The Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics is a new and important regional group within the IMIA and it represents an extension of IMIA's global interests in promoting IT health. To date, the APAMI family comprises of 13 members, nearly all of whom are representing their national health informatics associations. These are Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippine, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and
Vietnam. Member societies from India, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka are corresponding members.

An inaugural conference for APAMI was held in Singapore in 1994. During this conference, enthusiastic contributions from individuals in all of the APAMI participating countries as well as outside the APAMI group swelled our scientific program to some 100 paper and poster presentations and scientific demonstrations covering a wide range of topics in health informatics. A selection of some of the best papers was subsequently published in a special issue of the International Journal of Biomedical Computing (Vol. 40, 1995).

The APAMI triennial conferences were (or will be) held:
Singapore: 1994
Sydney: 1997
Hong Kong: 2000
Seoul: 2003
Taipei: 2006
Hiroshima: 2009