On July 5th passed away academician professor Jana Zvarova, one of pioneers and one of most influential Medical informatics scientist and expert in Europe and in the world. Professor Jana Zvarova was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. After graduating in mathematics in 1965 at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague she has been working with several faculties of Charles University in Prague. She completed external doctoral studies under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Albert Perez, member of IFIP. He brought her attention to the field of Medical informatics and opened the contacts with founders of IMIA. Jana Zvárová founded the Medical informatics section of the Czech Society of biomedical engineering and Medical informatics in the year 1978. The same year, she received Ph.D. scientific degree at Charles University in Prague. She passed the habilitation at Charles University in 1991 and she was nominated by the president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel as Full Professor at Charles University in Prague in 1999. She reached the highest Czech scientific degree, Doctor of Sciences in 1999 at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Professor Jana Zvárová has delivered presentations and published internationally on Medical informatics and statistics issues and systematically sought to apply new theoretical knowledge in biomedicine, particularly in relation to Epidemiology and Public health and their subsequent transfer to the educational process. Since 1994 she has chaired the European Center of Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology of Charles University and Academy of Sciences CR (EuroMISE Center), and between 2006-2011 professor Jana Zvárová was the director of the Center of Biomedical Informatics. She was the representative of the Czech Republic to the Councils of International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI). She had significant professional participation in national and international initiatives in biomedical informatics and statistics, especially in the field of research, higher education and continuing education using new information technology. She has been a member of the editorial boards of national and international journals. She has served as the expert in the field for the EC and Czech governmental institutions.
The results of Professor Jana Zvárová’s research activities are presented in 10 monographs and more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals. The total number of citations of her work is more than 600 and she was the main author of three patents directed to biomedicine. She has initiated the development of Ph.D. studies in Biomedical Informatics under the School of Postgraduate doctoral studies of biomedicine of Charles University and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and she was chairing the board of Biomedical Informatics. Within European projects she opened new lines of research and education concerning electronic health record, knowledge representation in clinical guidelines, decision support systems and methods for evaluation of knowledge in the Czech Republic. In addition to extensive publishing activities Dr. Zvárová has delivered a number of invited lectures at national and international conferences and universities, worked in scientific boards of several universities, national and international societies and editorial boards of professional journals. She served in the program committees of many national and international conferences and conducted fairly extensive peer review activities, including expert services for the European Commission. She was the member of the working group on Electronic Health Care of the Czech Medical Society. Professor Jana Zvarova organized several IMIA and EFMI international conferences and workshops in Prague. She was the Editor-in-Chief of one of the EFMI endorsed journals–European Journal of Biomedical Informatics (EJBI). She has initiated the foundation of the EuroMISE Mentor Association focused on the international cooperation in mentoring activities.
For results in science and education Prof Dr. Zvárová has received the following awards: Honorary membership Romanian Society of Medical Informatics (1997), Medal of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Medical Informatics (1998), Honorary membership in the Foundation Grigore C. Moisil for Applied Informatics (1999), University medal of University for Health Informatics and Technology, Tyrol (2004), Honorary membership in the Czech Society of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Informatics (2004), Medal of Charles University, Faculty of Science (2005), Medal of Charles University, 1st Faculty of Medicine (2008), Honorary membership in the Society for Cybernetics and Informatics (2010). In the year 2015 Jana Zvarova has been elected as Honorary Fellow of European Federation of Medical Informatics (FEFMI) and in 2017 she has been elected as member of International Academy of Health Informatics Sciences (MIAHSI). Undergraduate and postgraduate students teached by professor Jana Zvarova and many other colleagues and friends, especially in EFMI and IMIA community will remember Jana as great and excellent academic, scientist, expert, with a lot of ideas, energy and knowledge for everybody and everyone in every time and every situation, spread it cordially and without self-interest. She will be always in our heart.
July 7th, 2017
Prof Izet Masic, MD, PhD