INTRODUCTION

The 2nd E-Health Congress is being held in Limak Atlantis Resort Hotel, Belek – Antalya in 17th-21st of October 2007 in order to inform all stakeholders of the latest developments in the e-Health Project, which has an important place in the e-Transformation Project in Turkey and Information Society Strategy of ministry of Health of the Republic of Turkey, to share the experiences of the European Union and developed countries and to further strengthen the solidarity among health and IT staff.

E-Health provides proven-solutions in meeting the patients' expectations that change in the field of health due to the increasingly-aging population, in fighting the health threats such as SARS and avian influenza that may suddenly occur and in rendering cost-efficient health services for decreasing the repeated services.
 
Last year, 630 health and IT professionals attended the Congress held in Princess Hotel, Balçova – İzmir in the 2nd-5th of November 2006, titled as the 1st Health Informatics Congress where both domestic and international developments in the e-Health area were discussed.

With the first effects of Information and Communication Technologies on the field of health, significant progress was made both in preventive medicine and management of diagnosis and treatment processes. It is possible to minimize the medical mistakes which are one of the most important causes of death in hospitals only by having an effective information and communication infrastructure. Practices concerning the rules to be followed in the Hospital Information Systems, policies to be followed in collection of medical data, National Health Data Glossary, Health Code Reference Server, Tele-medicine, smart citizen card project and e-prescription are some of the topics to be discussed in the Congress this year.

Approximately 700 people including the high level administration of the Ministry of Health (Minister, Undersecretary, Deputy Undersecretaries, Director Generals and Head of Departments), Ministry of Finance, State Planning Institution, TUBITAK, Social Security Institutions, Pensions Fund, Medical Superintendents and Deputy Medical Superintendents, Provincial Directorates of Health, Hospital Managers in charge of hospital information systems, universities and companies producing hospital information systems are expected to participate in the 2nd e-Health Congress. Turkish Informatics Foundation has a great deal of contribution into this Congress organized by our Ministry.

We do expect your active participation into our Congress where the objectives of the e-Health Project conducted by the Ministry of Health in order to establish an information society in the health sector (Provision and Installation of the National Health Information System), e-health road map, expectations from the sector and strategies and experiences of developed countries in health sector shall be discussed and exchanged.

Specialist Dr. Orhan Fevzi GÜMRÜKÇÜOĞLU
Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Health
Acting Undersecretary