The current volume presents accepted full papers from the Special Topic Conference of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI STC 2018), held from 15 to 16 October 2018 in Zagreb, Croatia. By the assigned deadline, we had received 95 submissions from which, after review, SPC accepted 52 as full papers to be included in this volume of proceedings. The Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) would like to present these scientific outcomes from the EFMI STC 2018 Conference to the academic community.

EFMI STC 2018 is the latest annual conference in the series of special topic conferences organized by EFMI, and focusing each year on a specific topic or topics of interest to the biomedical and health informatics community. The conference focuses on improving healthcare by means of decision support systems which utilize data from biomedical informatics implementations across the entire spectrum: from clinical informatics and health informatics to public health informatics as applied in the healthcare domain. Decision making is also of importance in the area of health management, where organizational issues can play an important role in the implementation of biomedical and health informatics applications. An additional topic of this dual-spread conference is the educational aspect of biomedical and health informatics. Curriculum development, educational implementations, recommendations, evaluation, and accreditation are discussed, and professional development and skills certification processes are presented. We treat the field of biomedical informatics in a very broad framework, examining the implications of decision making in the clinical domain and in health management, while providing a bridge to the educational processes to ensure knowledge sustainability and improved professional development for all those working in the field of healthcare. Data, informatics, decision making and education foster and empower health professionals and informaticians, enabling them to improve healthcare for the benefit of patients. The EFMI Working Groups engaged for this content are: EDU (Education) and IDeS (Information and Decision Support in Biomedicine and Health Care).

This volume incorporates only the full papers accepted for oral presentation at the conference. It should be noted that the proceedings are published in the internationally indexed series of Studies in Health Technology and Informatics (SHTI) of IOS Press.

The editors would like to thank the members of the SPC, the local organizing committee, and, in particular, all reviewers, who performed in an outstandingly professional and objective way throughout the process of refereeing the submitted scientific work, producing a high-quality publication for a successful scientific event.

Zagreb, 30 August 2018.

The Editors:

John Mantas

Zdenko Sonicki

Mihaela Crişan-Vida

Kristina Fišter

Maria Hägglund

Aikaterini Kolokathi

Mira Hercigonja-Szekeres