ICST City University London Create-Net

eHealth 2009

Second International ICST Conference

on

Electronic Healthcare for the 21st century

Welcome Note by the General and Scientific Chair

Welcome to the 2nd congress on Electronic Healthcare for the 21st Century.

Having attended a successful eHealth 2008 conference in London, I was delighted by the privilege of being appointed as a General and Scientific chair of the 2nd eHealth conference in 2009 and was thinking hard how to make this congress unique.

The key topic of eHealth 2009 is investigating a realistic potential of the Internet in providing evidence-based healthcare information and education to patients and global users. We met the proudly defined aim of eHealth 2009: bringing together the three medical sectors: academia, industry and global healthcare institutions and we all look forward to the exciting programme that exceeded all expectations.

I am delighted to announce two prestigious keynote speakers: industry will be represented by Dr Harald Korb from Vitaphone and healthcare research institutions by Dr Erik van der Goot from the EC Joint Research Centre.

We accepted 26 full and 10 short technical presentations by speakers from all over the world, having received over 80 submissions. The commercial angle will be provided by 12 exciting industrial speakers representing companies such as Cisco, CSAM Health, and Philips, as well as international healthcare organisations such as Med-e-Tel and the Health On The Net Foundation.

I am delighted to have worked closely with the European Centre European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Stockholm who will present two technical papers and will have a dedicated session to demonstrate the wide spectrum of their ICT activities.

The panel discussion "Challenges of eHealth in the 21st century: When Will Industry and Academia Meet the Needs of Healthcare Delivery?" will bring a vibrant discussion by 10 confirmed panellists from all 3 sectors.

The Poster Session will provide a unique opportunity for presenting work in progress projects and a highly-subscribed Demonstration Session will offer a hands on experience in an informal setting.

Finally, we will organize a novel evening activity encouraging industry-academia-healthcare networking called "Speed Dating" and above all, an elegant cruise on the Bosphorus as the congress Gala dinner.

I look forward to welcoming you to Istanbul and this thrilling event.

Patty Kostkova, General and Scientific Chair

Patty Kostkova Patty Kostkova is a Senior Research Fellow and the head of City eHealth Research Centre (CeRC) at City University, London, UK. She received an MSc in Computer Science from the Charles University, Prague, and was awarded a PhD in Computer Science from The City University, London, UK. She has built CeRC into a thriving multidisciplinary research centre with expertise in computer science, information science and public health, collaborating with national and international partners on grants funded by prestigious bodies such as the European Commission, European Centre European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and the World Health Organization.

Set up in 2000, the National electronic Library of Infection (www.neli.org.uk) and the family of spin-off projects providing real-world services to medical professionals is accessed by over 40 000 unique users per month and is a unique test bed for the centre's research. Patty's research interests include using Web 2.0 tools for outbreak detection and early warning systems, medical digital libraries and semantic web, health care ontologies, educational games and the evaluation of Internet DLs and their impact on healthcare outcomes.

In recent years, she was appointed a consultant at WHO responsible for the design and development of information systems for international surveillance, to conduct a specification of an evaluation framework and a knowledge management strategy for the GLOBE portal run by the Foundation Merieux. She was also appointed a Consultant for the European Centre European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Stockholm to perform a situational analysis and scientific strategy for mapping of microbiological and public health expertise in the EU.

Patty is an Advisory Board member on the ECDC Knowledge Management Working Group, a member of journals editorial boards and international conference technical programme committees. In addition to being the Scientific and General Chair of eHealth 2009, her coordination activities include chairing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Healthcare Digital Libraries Workshop (HDL 2003-05) held in conjunction with ECDC 2003-05, two international eHealth Workshops taking place in London in 2002 and 2004 and a healthcare ontology workshop held at the MedInfo conference in Brisbane Australia in 2007.

A regular speaker invited by prestigious institutions such as Yahoo Research!, ECDC, WHO, NHS, and EC Joint Research Centre, Italy, she recently gave Keynote talks at the "Personalisation for ehealth" Workshop (held in conjunction with AIME 2009, Verona, Italy) and the K4HelP Workshop "Knowledge Management for Healthcare Processes" (held in conjunction with ECAI 2008, Patras, Greece).

She has published over 50 technical papers for international journals and conferences, has edited journals and has written a book chapter.