Plowing through this year’s MMVR contributions I am struck by the following:

• the depth of their creativity and willingness to explore uncharted waters

• the breadth of our diversity, both geopolitically and conceptually

• the extend to which we are both producers and consumers of these innovations

Each year we leapfrog ourselves toward the horizon. In four years our review process has moved from titles to abstracts to printed manuscripts to HTML documents. Our presentations, posters, and exhibits have increased in both quantity and quality. And with each year our visions have moved closer to everyday practice.

As is its tradition, the meeting continues to bring together many of the best from medicine, science, and engineering. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine: multidisciplinary projects, heroic solo flights—together we bootstrap ourselves into the future.

Suzanne J. Weghorst

Human Interface Technology Lab

Seattle, WA

If you bought and have read the MMVR3 proceedings, the following will make sense to you as a review of the fourth year of physicians getting exposed to tools of high technology with which to practice medicine, that is.

1995: This year was dominated by the bankruptcy of American science, new health care profit centers called HMOs, bank mergers, the Internet, and my being accused by the New York Times of running a research group for treating erection problems. No matter that I denied any such thing or insisted that I had done great research in other areas, my telephone rang off the hook in the rush to speak to the new guru of microsofts who had found a virtual cure. So, has reporting science overtaken the art of doing science? Fortunately the art of doing science is stronger still. Strong enough even to rebuild itself the American way: When all else fails, roll up your sleeves and start diggin’. The best place to dig right now is the mother of all virtual environments, the Internet. Suddenly, there are new ways of communicating illness, receiving diagnosis, and even receiving treatment. As Medicine Meets Virtual Reality for the fourth time in San Diego, we must face the new challenge to leave the gadget tower and interact.

Buen Vista! Schoene Aussicht! Bien Vue!

Hans B. Sieburg

World Information Networks Corporation

San Diego, CA

Health care in the information age presents exciting opportunities for new technologies and perplexing questions for those who develop them. Will they work? Do they make a difference?

The conference organizers thank all those who make the quantum leap—from the way it has been to create the way it will be— and take us with them. There would be no conference without the individuals who share their brilliance and their purpose through their work, providing us with the tools.

This is the possibility and the challenge: the transformation of medicine through communication.

Karen S. Morgan

Aligned Management Associates, Inc.

San Diego, CA

The Medicine Meets Virtual Reality:5 will be held in San Diego, California, from January 22-25, 1997. For information, contact Aligned Management Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 23220, San Diego, CA 92193 (telephone: 619-751-8841; fax: 619-751-8842; email: MMVR@amainc.com).