This volume contains the proceedings of the Thirteenth EFMI Special Topic Conference, held in Prague, Czech Republic, from 17–19 April 2013. The EFMI STC 2013 is Europe's leading forum for presenting the results of current scientific work in health-informatics processes, systems, and technologies this year.

EFMI STC 2013 has been organized by the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) in cooperation with the Czech Society of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Informatics and the Czech Medical Society J.E. Purkyne. It follows previous conferences in Bucharest, Romania (2001), Nicosia, Cyprus (2002), Rome, Italy (2003), Munich, Germany (2004), Athens, Greece (2005), Timisoara, Romania (2006), Brijuni Island, Croatia (2007), London, UK (2008), Antalya, Turkey (2009), Reykjavik, Iceland (2010), Laško, Slovenia (2011) and Moscow, Russia (2012).

Ensuring patient safety and providing high quality health services are the dominant challenges faced by healthcare systems around the world. The sharing of advanced knowledge and best practice in diagnosis, therapy, process optimization and prevention, the inclusion of public health and social sciences, as well as the deployment of any relevant information, is of vital importance. This includes enhanced networking, socially and technologically, based on advanced interoperability.

EFMI STC 2013 is entitled “Data and Knowledge for Medical Decision Support”, and addresses this important field, linking traditional and translational medicine with natural sciences and technology with a view to the design, implementation and deployment of intelligent systems. Medical decision support is an important part of this strategy. It has spawned research in the areas of knowledge discovery, formalization and distribution of knowledge, different ways of reasoning based on that knowledge depending on the nature of facts and processes, establishment and exchange of clinical guidelines, and also the inclusion of decisions not based on knowledge, such as neuronal networks and genetic algorithms. Data and knowledge sharing also confronts aspects of concept representation and languages, i.e. terminologies and ontologies. Most of the developed decision support systems can be integrated more or less easily into clinical information systems, both as part of those systems connected through standardized interfaces or as services to be remotely accessed. Knowledge representation must be appropriate for the different stakeholder groups for decision support systems to be accepted. Such systems must meet the expectations of developers, of users, such as physicians, nurses and other health professionals, but also those of patients. The usability of the system and the comprehensibility of the knowledge and decision support offered are critical in this regard. The standardization of principles, methodologies and means, and also the availability of specifications and tools such as open source products and artefacts are crucial to ensure wide and harmonized use. Another important factor for success is the careful evaluation and certification of systems as regards quality and functionality. EFMI STC 2013 is the latest in a series of events in Prague dedicated to the subject of STC, including the IMIA International Working Conference on Computer-Aided Medical Decision Making in 1985 and the Symposium on Computerized Guidelines and Protocols in 2004, which augurs well for a successful conference. The conference will be introduced by two Keynotes: Prof. Marion Ball (Baltimore, USA) presents Social and Cognitive Computing for Patient Engagement and Decision Support, in cooperation with Dr. Joseph M. Jasinski, and Prof. Jan van Bemmel (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) addresses The Future of Computer-Assisted Medical Decision Making: Can We Learn from the Past? Additionally, two invited speeches will frame basics, principles, methods, and advanced results relevant for the main streams of the conference. A rigorous review process has selected the best of the submissions, resulting in a scientific programme of 49 oral presentations, 31 poster presentations, 1 panel and 7 workshops, bringing active participants from 31 countries to the conference.

EFMI STC 2013 is complemented with panels on special topics, plenary poster sessions, and workshops. Most of the workshops are organized by EFMI Working Groups, such as “Sharing Knowledge and Tools for Decision Support in Biomedicine and Health Care”, realized by the EFMI WG Education in Health Informatics, “Decision Support and Decision Making Enabled by Personal Portable Devices”, organized by the EFMI WG Personal Portable Devices, “Using Information to Improve the Quality of Care in Type 2 Diabetes in Primary Care”, performed by the EFMI WG Primary Care Informatics, “Socio-economic Features of Traceability, ePrescription and Pharmacovigilance”, managed by the EFMI WG Traceability, and “Health Information Management for Europe-Ways and Perspectives”, established by the EFMI Project Group Health Information Management Europe. Another workshop addresses “Clinical Decision Support – From Research to Practice”. Finally, HL7 International performs a special workshop on “Standardization of knowledge management and innovations in science – Prerequisite or conflict?”

The editors would like to thank all the contributing authors for their excellent work, and the reviewers for lending their expertise to the conference, thereby enabling the final achievement. Furthermore, they are indebted to HL7 International, GS1 Europe, and HL7 Germany for sponsoring the printing of the proceedings. Last but not least, they would also like to thank Thomas Schabetsberger (Innsbruck, Austria), who collaboratively responded to all requests related to the Online-Submission System, and Roman Muška and Tereza Jeníkova from AIM Group International for managing the EFMI STC 2013 Website, the registration process and a number of communications.

Bernd Blobel, Arie Hasman and Jana Zvárová

Editors