In this publication leading experts present achievements and actual experiences in Medical Informatics by demonstrating experiences from various countries, using different technologies and approaches. The aim is to enhance contacts between physicians, hospital management and administrators, as well as IT and IS managers and consultants. Besides, colleagues from the “new” countries present examples on how they tackle the challenge of achieving modern health care, introducing the electronic patient record and interoperable hospital information systems. Many of the papers are dealing with solutions for secondary and tertiary care, and how far the different levels of care have to be and can be interlinked. Therefore, EPR and communication are major topics.
