The Korean Society for Medical Informatics (KOSMI), and in particular their Nursing Informatics Specialist Group (KOSMI-NI), not only organized a superb 9th International Congress on Nursing Informatics, NI2006, but were kind and generous hosts to the NI2006 Post Congress Conference.

The NI2006 Post Congress Conference was held at Phoenix Park, Pyung-Chang, Kangwon-do, Korea on June 14–17, 2006. We were only able to invite and accommodate about 35 people, although we know that many more of our colleagues have active interests in the issues that we discussed, and would have liked to have been involved. We hope that these proceedings will compensate, in some small way, those unable to be there, and that after reading them, they will feel encouraged to participate in the necessary ongoing discussions, both within IMIA-NI and more widely in the international nursing and informatics communities.

The NI2006 Post Congress Conference and its proceedings complement the main Proceedings of NI2006. We have included the papers developed by each of the five groups, together with specially written papers setting the context and summarizing the discussions and outcomes. We have additionally included June Clark's NI2006 Congress keynote paper; this was used during the Post Congress Conference discussions, and its inclusion here fills the gap of its absence from the main Proceedings of NI2006.

We would like to warmly thank everyone who assisted in the smooth running of the NI2006 Post Congress Conference, and who have made the production of these proceedings possible. In particular, we acknowledge and thank the NI2006 Organizing Committee, for selecting such a superb and conducive venue for the discussions, and for providing their generous support. We also thank all who, under the leadership of Jeongeun Kim and Hyunkyung Ryu, assisted on a daily basis at Phoenix Park, working hard to ensure the comfort of participants and the success of the event. Finally, we thank the group leaders for their hard work before, during, and after the Post Congress Conference, and all of the participants – our nursing informatics colleagues from around the world – without whose enthusiasm and contributions these proceedings would not have been possible.

Peter J. Murray, Hyeoun-Ae Park, W. Scott Erdley, Jeongeun Kim