The subject matter will, as always, cover the broad range of medical informatics, but this year's theme is using the resources of the internet to improve patient care. Topic areas include: computer-based patient records, hospital-based systems, community health information networks, information retrieval, user interface, expert systems, computer-based guidelines, health services research, health care and information policy, including confidentiality issues, standards, including controlled medical vocabularies, education and training, cognitive science, non-textual clinical information sources (e.g. signals and images). Topics will be presented in a variety of formats: plenary talks, scientific papers, poster presentations, panel discussions, demonstrations, informal workshops, software, tutorials, and a commercial exhibition.
Further information from: American Medical Informatics Association, 4915 St Elmo Avenue, Suite 401, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA, or http://www.amia.org/
This conference, organised by the European Federation of Medical Informatics, will include the following themes: Health care information systems, High performance computing and networking, Telemedicine, Security and integrity of medical data, Health care services, Biomedical signal and image processing, Medical databases, Artificial intelligence in medicine, Man-machine interfaces, Evaluation and validation of health care systems, Standardisation in medical informatics. Deadline for submission of papers: 30th October 1996.
Further information from: Congress Secretariat, MIE 97, Triaena Congress, 24 Har.
Trikoupi Street, GR-106 79 Athens, Greece.
Tel +30-1-3609511, Fax +30-1-3607962,
or on the Web at: http://www.med.auth.gr/mie97
Over the last ten years, medicine has more and more tended towards the prevention of diseases rather than diagnosing and treating them. This shift of strategies is most remarkable in primary care. Future family physicians should be closer to the community and families, and their medical role is expected to promote health rather than just treating disease processes.
Are we really prepared to fulfil these expectations? Are we sure our preventive strategies are effective? Do they really change morbidity and mortality? Are they efficient enough - is there any proof that the costs of health promotion initiatives are worthwhile? These are questions we have to answer from the public, politicians, and the providers of funding.
Stimulating research in both basic and applied prevention, finding adequate outcome measures, developing quality assurance activities, as well as improving medical education, are all possible instruments to find the answers and solutions.
Further information about the conference from:
ESGP/FM '97 c/o Guarant Ltd., Opletalova 15, CZ 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic
Tel +422 2421 0650 or +422 2421 0735
Fax +422 260 130
Themes: Family medicine - meeting people's needs; Family in Family Medicine; Clinical prevention and health promotion; Information in Family Medicine - clinical practice guidelines, practice-based research, information technology.
Further information from Conference Secretariat, Korea Convention Services, SL Kangnam
PO Box 305, Seoul 135-603, Korea.
email koconex@chollian.dacom.co.kr