This volume contains the proceedings of the 11-th EFMI Special Topic Conference that will be held in Laško, Slovenia on 14 and 15-th of April 2011. The EFMI STC 2011 is an important international forum for presenting results of current scientific work in health-informatics processes, systems, and technologies.

Achievements in this area will be introduced to a global audience. As a major event for science, medicine, and technology, the conference provides a comprehensive overview and in-depth, first hand information on new developments, advanced systems, technologies and applications.

The EFMI STC 2011 was organized by the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) in cooperation with Slovenian Medical Informatics Society (SDMI). It follows previous conferences in Bucharest, Romania (2001), Nicosia, Cyprus (2002), Rome, Italy (2003), Munich, Germany (2004), Athens, Greece (2005), Timişoara, Romania (2006), Brijuni Island, Croatia (2007), London, UK (2008), Antalya, Turkey (2009) and Reykjavik, Iceland (2010).

The theme of the STC 2011 is “E-salus trans confinia sine finibus – e-Health across Borders without Boundaries”, addressing a range of important aspects of cross-border e-Health services, like Knowledge Representation, Patient Empowerment, Social Care, or Cross-border Interoperability. The EFMI Working Groups that are scientifically supporting the conference are “Healthcare Informatics for Interregional Cooperation”, “Primary Care Informatics”, “Electronic Health Records”, and “Security, Safety and Ethics”.

The objective of the conference, reflected in the contents of the present volume, was to highlight health-related communication and collaboration at regional, national, and international level. Achieving and maintaining cross-border interoperability of electronic health record systems implies managing the continuous process of change and adaptation of a multitude of elements within and across electronic infrastructures in neighboring countries.

The proceedings volume opens with excellent keynote and invited contributions covering cross-border e-Health from international perspective, p-Health interoperability, and education across borders. The volume contains 21 papers from specialists of the field and also PhD papers continuing the good EFMI tradition encouraging young scientists to participate and present valuable work. The papers have been selected by the Scientific Program Committee (SPC) out of 41 submissions of papers, posters, and workshop proposals sent by experts from 20 countries. Each submission has been reviewed by three reviewers which have been selected from a list of 486 internationally acknowledged domain experts from all continents. The SPC chair and vice-chairs are especially thankful to all reviewers listed in the proceedings.

The scientific topics presented in the proceedings comprise interregional health information systems and applications, cross-border e-Health projects, patient and cross-border e-Health systems, multi-language and cultural issues in e-Health system, international standardization, assessment of e-Health systems, safety and security aspects of interconnected e-Health systems, e-communications in a global community, and cross-border education in health informatics.

The topics presented at EFMI STC 2011 are interdisciplinary in nature and consequently of interest to a variety of professionals: medical informatics, bioinformatics, and health informatics scientists, medical computing and technology specialists, public health, health insurance and health institutional administrators, physicians, nurses, and other allied health personnel, as well as representatives of industry and consultancy in the various health fields.

74 researchers, residing in 16 countries from Europe, North America, and Asia have reported their results in this volume. The EFMI STC 2011 has been completed through 9 posters presented in a special session, and 3 workshops.

The editors would like to thank all the authors for their excellent work as well as the reviewers for lending their expertise to the conference, thereby contributing to the final achievements. Furthermore, they are indebted to Slovenian Ministry of Health and HL7 International for sponsoring the print of the proceedings.

Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar, Bernd Blobel, Tomaž Marčun, Andrej Orel

(Editors)

Acknowledgement. The editors are indebted to Ivan Eržen, SDMI President for hosting the conference, to Mojca Paulin, Danila Perhavec and Nina Dolenc for managing the conference Website, the registration process and extended communications. They thank Thomas Schabetsberger for facilitating the online congress management. Furthermore, they are grateful to Mihaela Vida from University “Politehnica” Timişoara for her careful work in formatting the proceedings on hand.