The MIE'97 Conference (Medical Informatics Europe) is the fourteenth conference in the area of medical informatics that commenced in 1978 in Cambridge. This conference is held for two consecutive years in Europe before migrating in the third year to a country outside Europe where it is held under the name of MEDINFO. Through the years this conference has evolved into the major international event in the medical informatics area.

The proceedings contain 192 high quality papers in the area of medical informatics that set the tone for future developments in this field of science. These papers were selected from 255 submissions based on reviews by two or more impartial reviewers. The paper selection criteria were based on 1) significance to medical informatics, healthcare and/or medicine, 2) quality of scientific and/or technical content, 3) originality and innovativeness, 4) reference to related prior work, and 5) organisation and clarity of presentation.

Since the main theme of the conference is Information Highways in Medicine, the conference contents were broken up into four major themes related to this main theme. These themes are 1) health care information systems, 2) computer based patient records, 3) images and PACS, and 4) education/technology assessment. Thus the contents of these proceedings follow these four categories, although there are papers that belong to more than one category. In these cases, the papers were placed in the category that was considered by the editors as being closest to the contents of the papers. It is believed that these papers will provide a solid basis for the further development of medical informatics in the future through the information highways.

We wish to thank all who contributed to these proceedings, namely 1) the authors, 2) the reviewers and the EFMI board for their valuable advice, 3) the Laboratory of Medical Informatics for providing the editorial and E-mail facilities, and 4) IOS Press for giving advice during the preparation process and for their flexibility in the planning and printing of this book.

Costas Pappas, Chief Editor, Greece

Nicos Maglaveras, Greece

Jean-Raoul Scherrer, Switzerland