MEDINFO is the premier international Health and Biomedical Informatics event. MEDINFO 2015 is hosted by SBIS (Brazilian Health Informatics Society) on behalf of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and will take place in the city of São Paulo from the 19^th to 23^rd August 2015. MEDINFO 2015 continues a 41-year tradition of bringing together world leaders, policy makers, researchers, practitioners, educators, and students to exchange ideas and contribute to the latest developments, innovations, and global trends in this rapidly advancing, multidisciplinary field of Health and Biomedical Informatics. This is the first MEDINFO that has been organized to reflect the new two-yearly cycle approved by IMIA. We were thus very happy when we reached the submission and registration deadlines with numbers very similar to previous MEDINFOs that had been organized in three-yearly cycles.

Under the theme: “eHealth-enabled Health”, the world leaders in this field will gather in Brazil to share knowledge and analyze how Health and Biomedical Informatics is contributing to address some of the most challenging problems in health care, public health, consumer health and biomedical research. Researchers, clinicians, technologists and managers will attend and share experiences on the use of information methods, systems and technologies to promote patient-centered care, improve patient safety, enhance care outcomes, facilitate translational research, enable precision medicine and improve education and skills in health informatics.

This is an historical event as MEDINFO is hosted in Latin America for the first time. Inclusiveness has been a main goal in MEDINFO 2015 with affordable registration fees for the regional audience and use of Spanish and Portuguese language in tutorials and simultaneous translation in sessions held in the main auditorium. MEDINFO 2015 features a precongress offering of an extensive tutorial program by leading experts and a student paper competition that draws the best young talent from all over the world. The main program includes keynote talks, papers, posters, panels, workshops, and scientific demonstrations that span a broad range of topics from emerging methodologies that contribute to the conceptual and scientific foundations of Health and Biomedical Informatics, to successful implementations of innovative application, integration, and evaluation of eHealth systems and solutions.

The conference program features five keynote presentations, 178 paper presentations, 248 poster abstract presentations, 27 panels, 30 workshops and 17 scientific demonstrations.

The contributions and presentations included in the program were carefully selected through a rigorous review process involving almost 400 reviewers for a large number of submissions (793) sent by 2500 authors from 59 countries all over the world. The Scientific Program Committee Co-Chairs are grateful to the four Track Chairs, the members of the Scientific Program Committee and all the reviewers who have contributed to the process, and thank the Editorial Committee, the Local Organizing Committee and the IMIA officers (in particular CEOs and VP Medinfo) for assisting us in putting this program together.

The conference participants come to São Paulo from all continents and 60 different countries. We hope that you will enjoy the published proceedings and the overall program!

Sincerely,

Fernando Martin-Sanchez, PhD, FACHI, FACMI &

Kaija Saranto, PhD, FACMI, FAAN

Co-Chairs, MEDINFO 2015 Scientific Program Committee