Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), India's premier Communications Management Institute, is organising three days India’s first International Communication Management Conference (ICMC 2014), on ‘Managing Health Communication’ at the MICA campus from February 12-14, 2014.

ICMC-2014 is the most important health communication conference of the year which will bring together all the healthcare providers, communication and marketing experts, policy makers and activists under one roof.

Elaborating the objective of ICMC-2014, Dr Nagesh Rao, director & president of MICA, said, “Recent studies have shown that healthcare organizations lose substantial amounts of money annually as a result of ineffective and inefficient communication. This is not surprising, as the importance of communication in healthcare has not largely been recognized. A result of this is that healthcare providers are not given formal training in effective communication.”

“The conference aims at furthering holistic health and would provide a platform for bringing together scholars, activists and health practitioners to discuss frontier developments in communications theory and practice. It will be a great success if the conference can result in at least sensitizing people to useful health-related information,” added Dr Rao.

According to MICA, the conference has already attracted attention of several Indian and international institutions, including the University of Texas, National Accreditation Board of Hospitals & Healthcare Providers, Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Michigan State University and several renowned non-governmental organizations like NACO, UNICEF and PFHI will be presenting their papers on various topics relevant healthcare communications.

The scientific programme of ICMC-2014 is developed by leading experts with contributions by the University of Texas, Indian Institute of Health Management Research and the Michigan State University on topics such as Health Policy: People, Practice and Perspectives, Health Behavior & Health Education, Communicate to Connect: Media Construction and Emerging Partners of Health Communication and many more.

This three-day summit will feature plenary sessions, paper presentations and panel discussions that will facilitate dissemination and exchange of the best practices.

The MICA is dedicated to meeting the integrated marketing communication needs of the industry, government and community.