The principles discussed below give guidance for broader development and exploitation of information and communication technology support in medicine. They are based on intensive work since 1988 in the Berlin project initiative in medicine informatics¹. and in European consortia in Telemedicine and Health Care Telematics². They summarize observations that have since been made and proven in practice.

Based on models of medical work, practice and patient care, and on concepts of data processing, these principles draw a picture of the engineering task of computer support in medicine. It is to be noted, that for brevity throughout this chapter, we often use the term computer support to mean the wider combination of both information and communication technology.