The European Workshop on Acceptance of Telematics Applications and Services by Healthcare Professionals, called “Looking for the Convincing Cases”, took place 12-13 December, 1997 in Thessaloniki, Greece. It was supported by the European People’s Party of the European Parliament, together with the scientific assistance of the Health Telematics sector of the TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS Programme of the European Commission.

This book contains examples of “Convincing Cases” that were selected from all over Europe and presented by experienced users and healthcare decision-makers. These examples are based on successful cases of implementation of health telematics applications and services such as electronic healthcare records and hospital information systems, specialised departmental systems, emergency telemedicine, and regional healthcare networks. Examples of experiences relating to medical informatics education are also included since the education is a crucial factor in the area of user acceptance. Cases of successful promotion of good quality applications and other issues related to users and technology are included in the last section.

The need for the workshop came from the 10 years of experience in the research and development in the area of the European Commission in the area of health telematics and the recognition and support of the European Parliament for the user-friendliness and user acceptance of the new technologies and applications by all citizens in the upcoming Information Society. Promotion and dissemination of “Convincing Cases” are seen as important mechanism towards user acceptance and wider implementation of results of European RTD projects such as those supported by the TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS Programme.

The readers will find qualitative and quantitative descriptions of many useful experiences of implementation and use of health telematics systems and services. The text of many of the papers is very rich in quantitative analysis and statistics providing good source of reference data.

Finally, the editors would like to thank again the participation and support of the European Parliament, the European Commission, and all the participants and contributors to this workshop. It is the wish of the editors that this workshop, together with this book, constitute another small step towards user-friendly healthcare systems and services for the benefit of all the citizens.

Antonios Trakatellis

Stavroula Maglavera

Ilias Iakovidis