In Europe. standardisation activities in healthcare informatics officially started in April 1990 with the establishment of Technical Committee 251 within the European Standardisation Committee (CEN TC 251).

In December 1991 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) established its Healthcare Informatics Standards Planning Panel (HISPP).

Since then, standards developing organisations, standards users, researchers, government agencies and industry have been very active and have encouraged coordination and cooperation at an international level.

CEN TC251 and ANSI/HISPP are pleased to provide you with ‘Progress in Standardisation in Healthcare Informatics’ which predominantly features papers presented at a conference held in September 1992 in Geneva, Switzerland. This conference was held to present the current standing of important activities connected with healthcare infonnatics/telematics standards and to explore the ways of ensuring international coordination and cooperation worldwide.

It is encouraging to see the continued interest of a new and enthusiastic community of experts representing now not only the views of Europe and the United States but also of Australia and Japan.

Such a very promising and vast initiative could not be successful without the support and valuable advice of many people and friends. Amongst them we would like to thank Jan Van Herp, secretary of the Technical Board in CEN and chairman of ITSTC, who launched the idea of creating CEN TC251 (in Europe) and is continuing to encourage its activities. We are also grateful to Michel Audoux and An Deberdt, CEC DG XIII CS who agreed to fund the project-teams of CEN TC251 and consequently enabled the timely delivery of urgently needed standards for Europe. Our special thanks go also to Niels Rossing, head of AIM, CEC DGXIII C3 who supported CEN TC 251 from the very beginning and took all necessary measures to facilitate the exchange of results with the AIM Research and Development programme.

The progress in CEN TC251 could not have been achieved without the excellent work of Georges Van Maele, secretary of CEN TC251, who is to be considered as one of the engines behind the effort. We thank him for his important contribution.

The collaboration with U.S. through ANSI/HISPP has been made possible thanks to the enthusiasm and scientific background of J. Michael Fitzmaurice, Director of the Office of Science and Data Development (OSDD) of the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research (AHCPR) of the Department of Health, of Melvin Greberman from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and of Clement McDonald, president of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and now chairman of ANSI/HISPP. We very much appreciate their coordinating efforts and overall support.

We also thank Yoichi Satomura, chairman of the Standardisation Committee of the Japanese Association for Medical Informatics (JAMI), Nagaaki Ohyama, chairman of the ISAC Committee from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Masamitsu Oshima, chairman of MEDIS-DC, Takuja Naruse of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI), and last but not least Koji Miura, director of the Health Policy Bureau of the Ministry of Health and Welfare who all together act as initiators of standardisation in healthcare informatics in Japan.

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Standards Australia and Roderick Neame, chairman of the Joint Technical Committee for Health Informatics (JTC IT/14) which is closely aligned with Standards New Zealand.

We are confident that the network of cooperation installed in this way, will guarantee the elaboration of high quality implementable healthcare informatics standards, which we believe will play in the future an indirect but important role in the achievement of better healthcare to the benefit of the patient.

Georges J.E. DE MOOR

Chairman CEN TC 251