Peter Leo Reichertz (1930–1987) was a pioneer in the application of information and communication technology (ICT), not only to health care but also to health science research.

Together with François Grémy, he introduced the phrase Medical Informatics. His key paradigm was: providing the right information in the right place at the right time. He started his academic work with computers in medicine as a cardiologist at the Medical Faculty of Bonn before he moved to the US, where he worked with Donald Lindberg and other early pioneers in Missouri. In 1969, he received a full professorship at the newly founded Hannover Medical School (MHH), Germany. The chair was denominated Medical Documentation and Data Processing and later renamed Medical Informatics. As was usual in those days, the department included the Medical Computer Center. Reichertz was an initiator and the second president of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI). In 1983, Reichertz co-founded the German Professional Association of Medical Informatics (Berufsverband Medizinischer Informatiker, BVMI) and was elected as its first president.

In the seventies, Reichertz established the first Medical Informatics courses at the TU Braunschweig, Germany, with Jochen Möhr and Otto Rienhoff. Later, Peter Pretschner, who had collaborated with the Reichertz team at the MHH became the first chair of Medical Informatics at TU Braunschweig. In 2007, the departments in Hanover and Braunschweig joined forces to form the Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics (PLRI). The PLRI is proud to host EFMI STC 2019 on behalf of the German EFMI member Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie (GMDS) e.V. in collaboration with several IMIA, EFMI and GMDS working groups.

Against this background, the EFMI Special Topic Conference (STC) 2019 is dedicated to Peter L. Reichertz, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the start of his work in Hanover.

The current volume presents accepted papers from the EFMI STC 2019, held on April 7th to April 10th, 2019, in Hanover, Germany. By the assigned deadline, we had received more than 90 submissions, from which, after review, the Scientific Program Committee (SPC) accepted 50 as full papers to be included in this volume of proceedings. In addition, 16 poster presentations were accepted. The SPC would like to present these scientific outcomes from the EFMI STC 2019 to the academic community. EFMI STC 2019 is the latest annual conference in the series of special topic conferences organized by EFMI, which each year focus on a specific topic or topics of interest to the biomedical and health informatics community. With respect to Prof. Reichertz, ICT for Health Science Research was selected as the focus topic. The conference is dedicated to recent research & development supporting information systems in biomedical, translational and clinical research, as well as semantic interoperability across such systems for the purpose of data sharing and the analytics of cross-system integrated data. ICT systems for health science research are used in application domains such as clinical trials and the development of drug and medical devices, as well as translational medicine, aiming eventually at better prevention, diagnosis, and interventions in health and care.

A major challenge in this field is the communication with healthcare ICT systems, since much of the data for health science research comes from healthcare. Research often requires data of higher resolution, precision and quality than is typically available in healthcare ICT systems, thus, healthcare data sets are extracted, transformed and loaded into research data warehouses, which leads to a duplication of data and can challenge the integrity of data sets relating to a specific individual across research and healthcare systems, possibly hindering personalized medicine and translational research.

This volume incorporates not only the full papers accepted for oral presentation at the conference, but also the accepted poster presentations (as 2-pages abstracts and not indexed in Medline). As EFMI STC 2019 will have also a special issue in the Journal of Medical Systems (JOMS), some accepted oral papers have also been converted into a non-indexed abstract to avoid self-plagiarism and double-publications. The oral presentations are organized into 12 sessions:

• Digitization of systems medicine

• Data quality, privacy, and security

• Health interoperability through standards

• Medical registries and clinical trials

• Interfaces with diagnostic or therapeutic systems

• Novel approaches in ICT for health research

• Big data analytics

• Towards interoperable health information systems

• Improving the understanding of health data

• Data-driven decision support in systems medicine

• Mobile data capture and electronic patient reported outcomes (ePRO)

• ICT for clinical trials.

The proceedings are published by IOS Press in the internationally indexed series of Studies in Health Technology and Informatics.

The editors would like to thank the local organizing committee – and all reviewers in particular – 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.

Furthermore, we would like to thank the keynote speakers. Prof. Dipak Kalra, President of the European Institute for Innovation through Health Data will deliver a talk on Raising the impact of real world evidence. Dr. Pierre Meulien, Executive Director of The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is going to present on How to harness big data for the benefit of patients.

Unique for this STC, the meeting has been extended to a third day in honor of Peter L. Reichertz. The Reichertz Symposium will be open to the public (no conference fee) and will present invited talks and interviews. It will address the history of medical informatics, lessons learned, and future perspectives in research, education and practice. At this symposium, an extraordinary EFMI Peter L. Reichertz Young Scientist Prize will be presented for the best paper and presentation at EFMI STC 2019. The Young Scientist Prize comes with a check for Euro 1,000 and is usually reserved for the EFMI main conference, the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE).

With all this in mind, we wish all of you a successful and exciting conference that establishes personal connections in all topics for ICT in Health Science Research.

Hanover, April 2019

Amnon Shabo (Shvo)

Inge Madsen

Hans-Ulrich Prokosch

Kristiina Häyrinen

Klaus-Hendrik Wolf

Fernando Martin-Sanchez

Matthias Löbe

Thomas M. Deserno