Abstract
COVID-19 pandemic asks the engagement of all experts in different medical fields to help in solving consequences such an overwhelming success that we follow it with COVID-19 Management, including Medical Informatics experts.
COVID-19 pandemic asks the engagement of all experts in different medical fields to help in solving consequences such an overwhelming success that we follow it with COVID-19 Management, including Medical Informatics experts.
The European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) organized the 31st Medical Informatics Europe Conference (MIE) in Athens, Greece from 29th to 31st May 2021, according to EFMI Council decision held in Lyon om August 30th, 2019. Due to the continuous serious pandemic situation across the globe at the time it was decided for the safety of MIE 2021 participants to be held as a Virtual event.
The Conference was organized by the “MCO Congress” and the Scientific Programme Committee is chaired by Professor John Mantas, Honorary Fellow of EFMI, and President of the Greek Biomedical and Health Informatics Association (GBHI).
The current pandemic situation emphasized the importance of Health Informatics into the scientific process of evidence-based reasoning and decision making at all stages of healthcare. It was reason that Scientific Program Committee of EFMI decided to use motto of 2021 MIE Conference “Public Health and Informatics“. Why? Because COVID-19 Pandemic changed the world and almost whole countries wordwilde their health care systems modified according Corona consequences and influence on daily life and work, including use application of Health information systems and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as servis for all levels of health care systems which has been completely changed during almost last two years.
MIE ‘21, was fully digital Medical Informatics Europe on-line conference which has included 410 participants. Program of the conference covered: 203 full papers, 32 communications, 26 posters, 15 workshops, 5 panels, 6 demos, and 6 amazing keynotes.
During Opening ceremony of MIE ‘21 the amazing walk has done in the memory lane prepared by Jacob Hofdijk with pictures from going back to the early eights and the first MIEs and the video of Izet Masic about historical background of EFMI from establishing in 1976 until today. The first time in the history of EMI all participants have had possibility to follow on-line presentations of lectures on every session and to read small reviews of them during the same day. A the Closing session, we had possibility look again at the highlights of the last three days, the virtual conference environment, and the booth of EFMI where you can fill out the yEFMI surveys.
It is important to say how eHealth applications and the Digitalization became influential and fundamental paradigm changer in the era of Health Informatics and Public Health during last two decades. Massive amount of data from the molecular biology associated with massive data about the environment, behaviour and lifestyle, exposition factors and personal records, the rise of unprecedent processing power in health information systems and artificial intelligence as well as health analytics methods and tools empowered Medicine, Nursing and Healthcare sciences are facing the Public Health challenges.
The MIE ‘21 conference was a unique opportunity to meet experts from all involved fields, from deep learning or genomics, up to human factors, ethical and societal aspects. The MIE conferences was not only attract senior researchers and top notched experts of the field. It was also, and mostly, a place where young scientists have had chance and possibility to present their works, to meet peers, to network, to seek job and career opportunities.
Also, important part of MIE 2021 Conference was organizing a special tracks with European initiatives and projects, including special tracks with European projects, such as FAIR4HEALTH and standardizing organizations, such as HL7, and discuss the building of global frameworks to improve data usability to support life science research across borders, systems, and languages. Specific tracks devoted to encryption, blockchain and privacy-conscious data sharing, along with ethical and legal experts, will investigate and propose practical way to support innovation to alleviate the burden of diseases such as COVID-19, cancers and promote bio-surveillance networks for example.
Finally, in the Program of MIE 2021 LOC, chaired by Professor John Mantas and his team, special attention was given to involving patients and citizens at the centre of the debates, along with European projects, patients’ organizations, and patient-partners’ groups, to discuss innovative ways to reach an active involvement and participation that can leverage the field. Involving private partners also has been included in the special sessions regarding the prolific results of the public-private convergence, with the presence of the whole range of public organizations to private partners, from young start-ups recently born from talented young entrepreneurs to global companies and other non-profit international organizations active in the field of life science and information technologies.
It is possible to look on EFMI web site (www.efmi.org) all events realized by LOC of MIE ‘21 as complete the “three days survey”. All presented papers were published by IOS Press in Proceedings and deposited on Pubmed web site and visible during the conference, but also revisited as the video presentations from the last three days of the conference in the video library, thanks to the generous sponsorship of SNOMED International.
In the Closing session, John Mantas, chair of Local Organizing Committee of MIE ‘21 and Lacramiora Stoicu Tivadar, Former President of EFMI and Co-chairs of the Scientific Program Committee announced the awards, for presenters of the best papers of MIE 2021 Conference.
Catherine Chronaki, new EFMI President, announced next EFMI STC which will be held in Sevilla, Spain in November 22-24 2021.
