This volume of Studies in Health Technology and Informatics – Building Continents of Knowledge in Oceans of Data: The Future of Co-Created eHealth – Proceedings of MIE 2018 – contributes to the discussion of ongoing challenges in eHealth, digitalization, capacity building and user engagement with true inter-disciplinary and cross-domain collaboration arising for 21-century health care.

The MIE conferences are the most important conference hosted by the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI). The first MIE conference was hosted in Cambridge, UK in 1978 and therefore, MIE2018 marks the 40th anniversary for the Medical Informatics Europe – MIE – conferences. Over the years, the contributions presented at the MIE conferences, presented in the IOS Press series Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, has contributed to set the stage for medical informatics, health informatics and eHealth development in Europe.

The contributions in this book are no exception and share the full range of methodological and application oriented health informatics achievements at regional, national, and international level. The first part of the MIE 2018 conference theme – Building Continents of Knowledge in Oceans of Data – zoom in on experiences, methods and expectations for the future coming from achievements in Big Data analytics, data driven development of eHealth in the current health care systems and contributions from citizens' engagement in their self-management. The second part of the theme – The Future of Co-Created eHealth – has triggered a large number of papers describing strategies to create, evaluate, adjust or deliver tools and services for improvements in the healthcare organizations and citizens to respond to the challenges of the health systems.

This book presents the 190 full papers presented at that conference, held in Gothenburg, Sweden in April 2018. We have grouped the papers under these headings: Standards and interoperability, Implementation and evaluation, Knowledge management, Decision support, Modeling and analytics, Health informatics education and learning systems; and Patient centered services. Attention is also given to development for sustainable use, educational strategies and workforce development, which may arise when health professionals collaborate with colleagues and patients in virtual teams.

The concept of ‘meaningful use’ opens up additional perspectives and offers exciting opportunities to ensure that users – broadly understood as health providers, patients and their families or consumers at large – are offered workable solutions relevant to their needs.

This volume will be of interest to all those whose work involves the analysis and use of data to support more effective delivery of healthcare.

Paris/Stockholm/Örebro/Oslo, March 8th 2018

Adrien Ugon, ESIEE-Paris, Noisy-le-Grand, France

Daniel Karlsson, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Gunnar O. Klein, Informatics/eHealth, School of Business, Örebro University

Anne Moen, Institute for Health and Society, University of Oslo, Norway