HIE Wire   back to index

Introduction to medinfo2001

From bjhc&im: Br J Healthcare Comput Info Manage 2001; 18(6): 3

Yes, the circus is coming, indeed it is. medinfo2001 begins in Docklands on 2 September, and as is only to be expected for so grand an occasion, it is accompanied by discretely British razzamatazz.

There is to be a Grand Opening, a reception at the National Maritime Museum, a ghost walk, a guided tour of the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace, a fish and chip supper, and finally a gala dinner in The Merchant Taylor's Hall. All this is right and proper to mark the first time that the United Kingdom has acted as host to the leading international health informatics event.

What is surprising is that, in a field where the United Kingdom plays so very prominent a part, it has taken nearly 30 years to bring the Conference to London — but then there was a 40-year gap between the first and second time the Olympics came to London, and more than 50 have elapsed since then, so there are no grounds for complaint. What is clear is the contribution that this country has made to the Conference since the first medinfo in Stockholm in 1974, and for the nine world congresses that have followed since. Even clearer is the growth that it has undergone in size and support across the world. At the 1974 Stockholm Conference, there were 182 papers, delivered in three streams. In 1989, the Singapore Conference had four main streams, with 262 papers published in the proceedings. For this year's medinfo, 274 papers are currently anticipated, to be delivered in twelve streams, and accompanied by over 30 workshops and more than 130 scientific posters.

This truly astonishing growth since the first conference not only demonstrates the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, and its impact on everyday life, but also the rapidly growing importance of medical informatics and the increasingly pivotal role that it plays in healthcare provision.

One of the major functions of international conferences that seldom appear in the brochure is the opportunity that it offers to learn from others about differing approaches to similar problems, about the refreshing realisation that — though they may differ greatly in externals — healthcare systems across the globe have au fond a great deal in common. medinfo2001 will no doubt provide similar opportunities, but bolstered by a formidable array of tutorials on the opening day. Led by a range of experts from around the world, topics to be covered range from Gems or Garbage: how might family doctors assess the quality of medical information on the Internet, via Medical concept representation: from classification to understanding, to A medical multilingual lexicon for international co-operation. Nor — as might be expected with a 12-stream conference — is the formal scientific programme any less varied: there are no fewer than 21 fields of expertise represented, ranging from bio-informatics through imaging, robotics and virtual reality to telematics in healthcare.

In this issue of the Journal, we preview some of the aspects of medinfo2001. Dr Ray Jones, Senior Lecturer in Medical Informatics in the Department of Public Health, Glasgow, offers his pick of presentations from the Scientific Programme, covering a new domain in healthcare informatics — information for patients. Marion Ball, Vice President, Clinical Solutions, HealthLink Inc, writes about the development of nursing informatics in the USA, and the new opportunities and responsibilities facing it. Finally, Jean Roberts, Chairman of the Local Organising Committee for medinfo2001, offers some practical advice to those submitting papers to major conferences of this sort.

Later issues of the Journal will offer fuller coverage of the major highlights of the Congress, for which this issue is a brief preview. For the present, all that remains is to wish medinfo2001, and its organisers well, and to look forward to an exciting four days.

Michael Fairey, Commissioning Editor, bjhc&im