The conference “New Technologies in Hospital Information Systems” which is held in Ulm, Germany from 20–23 September 1997 focuses on architectural concepts for hospital information systems. It is hosted on behalf of the European Telematics Applications Project HANSA (Healthcare Advanced Networked System Architecture) with support of the GMDS WG Hospital Information Systems and the GMDS FA Medical Informatics.

Huge efforts have been undertaken in the last decade to define design criteria and to evolve the architectural layout of hospital information systems to meet rapidly changing user requirements, varying legal demands and the challenges of modern medicine. Internet Technology, Object Oriented Design, the Electronic Patient Record or Integrated Academic Information Management Systems are just some highlights which have moved into the focus of hospital information system design. Standardisation initiatives have also been carried out and are under way in Europe to provide a formal foundation for open systems in healthcare.

The conference will supply a broad overview upon such approaches and introduce into European efforts of standardisation in hospital information systems architecture. As one example, the HANSA project is based upon the European Prestandard for Healthcare Information System Architecture which has been drawn up by CEN/TC 251 PT01-13.

The proceedings contain 28 high quality papers dealing with architectural concepts, models and developments for hospital information systems. The conference contents and proceedings have been grouped in 7 sessions:

• Reference Architectures

• Modelling and Applications

• The Distributed Healthcare Environment

• New Technologies: Intranet Solutions

• New technologies: Object Orientation

• The State of Art: Networked Solutions

• Standards and Applications

A chapter with a short introduction to each of the 5 Tutorials has been included as well.

We wish to thank all, who contributed to this proceedings.

The editors, August 1997

J. Dudeck Gießen

B. Blobel Magdeburg

W. Lordieck Bielefeld

T. Bürkle Gießen