It is indeed a privilege to write the foreword to these proceedings for Nursing Informatics 1997. This, the sixth in a series of international congresses, reflects the evolution of a vibrant discipline in its chosen topic, The Impact of Nursing Knowledge on Health Care Informatics. Today, nursing informatics is affecting the whole of health care. Increasingly, nurses are winning recognition for their critical roles as caregivers and informaticians.

Since first meeting in Tokyo, Japan, in 1980, during Medinfo, the triennial congress held by the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), nursing informatics has been one of its most active and vigorous working groups. Recently, IMIA honoured the group's standing as the leading Nursing Informatics organization world-wide by designating it to be the first IMIA special interest group.

Nursing Informatics '97 holds the distinction as being the first meeting sponsored by this new special interest group. It continues in the tradition set by meetings held every three years, first in England, then Canada, Ireland, Australia, the United States, and now in Sweden. New Zealand will host the congress in the year 2000.

Over the years, Nursing Informatics-first the working group and now the special interest group-has benefited from strong and dedicated leadership with Maureen Scholes, followed by Kathryn Hanna, Elly Pluyter Wenting, and now Ulla Gerdin. It has produced seminal proceedings for its congresses and invitational working conferences, and its members have published widely, creating a growing body of Nursing Informatics literature.

Nursing Informatics has changed the practice of health care, defining new roles for nursing in education, research, patient care, and administration and reaching out into industry, government and consultancies.

Today, the field continues to evolve. The range of issues addressed in these Stockholm proceedings is extraordinary, including nursing language, cognitive skills, education and training, nursing research, systems design, decision support, patient records, patient management, standards, and more. Like earlier symposia, Nursing Informatics '97 will clarify values, strategies and practices central to the profession of nursing. Once again, we will see roles emerge as new fields in Clinical Nursing Informatics takes form.

Finally, as has been the case with earlier international nursing informatics meetings, those of us privileged to attend NI '97 are part of a global network, building bridges to our colleagues around the world and creating a lasting bond. We are now all “sisters,” connected in friendship and spirit, and through the Internet. We truly have a worldwide web of lasting relationships, formed in our common quest to improve health care for the patients of the world.

Marion J. Ball, Ed. D.