This volume of Studies in Technology and Health Informatics contains the proceedings of MIE2011, the 23^rd Conference of the European Federation of Medical Informatics. MIE2011 is hosted by Forum for Databehandling i Helsesektoren (FDH) in collaboration with the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI). MIE2011 builds on the traditions of 22 preceding MIEs, starting in Cambridge (1978), and more recently in Geneva (2005), Maastricht (2006), Gothenburg (2008) and Sarajevo (2009).

The special theme for MIE2011 is “User centered networked health care”, highlighting design for and experiences by health professionals and patients working and living in ICT enabled environments. This ties into the Scandinavian tradition of active user involvement in all aspects of design and implementation of complex workplace technology. MIE2011 will highlight the broad range of health informatics research and innovations at regional, national, and international levels. Health care is transforming into a networked activity where strict boundaries between health care facilities and the home are vanishing. Patients demand and require continuity of care. Health care providers become team players sharing decision-making responsibilities with colleagues and patients. This poses interesting challenges for health informatics, where critical appraisal of strategies for user involvement, deployment and sustainable use of information systems and new forms of patient-provider collaboration are needed. Ideas presented as “meaningful use” open additional perspectives and exciting opportunities to ensure that the users, understood broadly as health providers, patients, their families or consumers at large, would be offered solutions according to their needs. Such trends and developments are recognized across the contributions at MIE2011.

Related to the specific theme, let us highlight specifically:

• User-centeredness is discussed in terms of usability and usefulness for the health provider, but also in terms of citizen orientation, empowerment and opportunities for patient-provider collaboration or self-care enabled by web applications.

• Networked health care may be realized by an integrated, operational EHR in collaborative environments where appropriate information is available at the point of need. Continued development of standards and terminologies is complemented with search strategies to make sense of free text entries in several languages.

• Coordination and collaboration in an institution or across levels of care is another line of development towards patient oriented health care where current developments discussions of interoperability, standards and search strategies in new ways. Such achievements also calls for discussions of privacy and security, as well as careful evaluation to systematize and share the experiences and gains.

• The changing environments of care reflect the changing division of labor and calls for more permeable boundaries between community health, primary care, and specialized care to support unfolding patient trajectories of care. In this picture, integration and additional perspectives in health informatics, like social care informatics, open opportunities to support mobility of patients and providers in new and innovative ways.

MIE2011 received approximately 500 submissions for consideration. Selection has been a major challenge for the Scientific Program Committee. The majority of the submissions received three reviews, which were accompanied by suggestions and advice for possible improvements of the contribution. We are indebted to the over 220 colleagues who volunteered time and energy to serve as reviewers. To honor their contribution they are all listed in this book. The Conference Program and the Proceedings offers a selection of oral presentations submitted as full papers or short communications, as well as workshops, panels and posters. Many of these activities are sponsored by the EFMI Working Groups. It is encouraging for the development of health informatics that many of the submissions are by young researchers. We are pleased that MIE2011 is an arena where they choose to share their ideas and findings with peers. Furthermore, MIE2011 will host an application oriented track “partnerships in innovation” where EFMI institutional members and corporate affiliates participate actively.

Most topics presented in this MIE2011 proceedings are interdisciplinary in nature and may interest a variety of stakeholders: nurses, physicians and allied health providers, health IT specialists, informaticians, engineers, academics and representatives from industry and consultancy. This European conference gathers participants from most parts of the world, reflected by the nationalities of the more than 1150 contributing authors representing Europe, Asia, Africa as well as South and North America. We hope you will enjoy the program of keynotes, presentations of accepted papers, workshops, panels and posters and participate in exchange of ideas and experiences.

The proceedings is an integral part of MIE2011. The printed version of the MIE2011 proceedings includes the PubMed indexed, full papers accepted for presentation. The MIE2011 CD includes the printed proceedings (i.e., the full papers), short communications, posters, workshops, panels as well as demonstrations and the “partnership in innovation” synopses. To facilitate wider access to the material presented during MIE2011, the proceedings with the full papers will be available from IOS Press online book platform. The additional material on the CD will be handled as an EFMI publication.

We are grateful to the colleagues who agreed to serve as members of the SPC core: Drs. Truls Østbye, Elske Ammenwerth, Ronald Cornet, Rolf Engebrecht, Sabine Koch, Silvana Quaglini, Pieter Toussaint, and Rune Fensli. Dr. Alexander Horsch chaired the subcommittee for workshop and panel selection. Dr. Sabine Koch chairs the award committee for the Peter L. Reichertz Prize that will be awarded to the best paper by a young scientist, Dr. Robert Cornet chairs the committee selecting recipient of the Rolf Hansen Prize for the best paper on clinical information system and Dr. Elske Ammenwerth chairs the committee selecting recipient ofthe prize for the best poster.

Acknowledgement: The editorial team is grateful to Ms. Shazia Mushtaq for her careful and extensive work editing the submissions and preparing the proceedings.

Oslo, Aalborg, Rotterdam, June 2011

Anne Moen, Stig Kjær Andersen, Jos Aarts, Petter Hurlen (editors)