Welcome to the 3rd congress on Electronic Healthcare for the 21st Century.

Many of you who attended the successful eHealth 2009 congress in exotic Istanbul last year were enquiring about the 3rd edition of this conference. It is reassuring to see that in 3 years, this event has established itself as the key annual conference in the domain of eHealth, with a fast growing professional and scientific community.

Faithful to the unique aim of this conference, bringing together the three medical sectors: academia, industry and global healthcare institutions, we are delighted to see high quality scientific submissions, wide representation from industry and SMEs, ECDC and WHO, as well as a growing interest among healthcare professionals and clinicians.

This is the first year we welcome two workshops held in conjunction with eHealth 2010: The 5th International workshop on Personalisation for e-Health, and the 6th Workshop on Agents Applied in Health Care.

We are delighted to announce two prestigious keynote speakers: "Global eHealth Challenges" will be presented by Dr Najeeb Al Shorbaji from World Health Organization, complemented by a keynote talk by Professor Mathew Swindells, the Chair of the British Computer Society: "Health bringing a breath of NHS and consultancy expertise".

We have accepted 35 full technical presentations by speakers from all over the world, having received over 70 submissions in total. These, along with papers from the 2 collocated workshops, will appear in the Springer proceedings to be published in early 2011. The commercial angle will be provided by industrial speakers representing companies such as Oracle, Philips, and IBM, as well as international healthcare organisations and clinical practitioners.

To encourage discussion and sharing of ideas and opinions between participants, we have organized two panels. The first panel will focus on how to tackle the political and technological barriers that hinder the free exchange of public health information between public health bodies, academia, industry, and the general public. The second panel will have a clinical focus, investigating the potential of Web 2.0 and Social Media and how to best exploit these to improve healthcare standards, as well as understanding the potential risks that arise through their widespread use.

We have accepted 10 poster presentations and 8 demonstrations that will be presented in a joint, informal session on the first evening of the conference. This will provide a unique opportunity for speakers to present work in progress and demonstrate new technologies and services.

We look forward to welcoming you all to Casablanca!