Open until December 15, 2004

The Editorial Board and the Health On the Net Foundation as guest editor of the International Journal of Medical Informatics invite practitioners and researchers to participate in a special issue dedicated to Health and the Internet for All. This special issue is planned to be published early in 2005.

The Internet provides unprecedented access to -- mostly unregulated -- health and medical information. Citizens have embraced it: health-oriented web sites rank amongst their most popular destinations. But can the Internet truly empower citizens and care providers as they seek trustworthy information about health and healthcare?

This special issue on the Health and the Internet for All will aim at understanding the current opportunities and challenges in the use of Internet as an enabling tool to improve the quality, efficiency and accessibility of health and healthcare for all citizens.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

Access to health and healthcare information
         - Promoting access for the disabled and impaired
         - Knowledge management – advanced information retrieval technologies
         - Internet usage statistics and demographics
         - Mobile web

Trust, security and legal issues of online medical information
        - Quality and security issues in e-Health
        - Ethical, privacy and legal issues
        - Internet technologies and standards

Online health information and the citizen
        - Empowering the patient and the care provider
        - Promoting health literacy

Information sharing paradigms in a global world
        - Internet and health information exchange
        - Internet as a tool for health systems development
        - Collaborative development of online health information

Authors of papers accepted for the MedNet 2003 conference are eligible; with the option to submit full-length papers based on adapted and updated versions of their original conference papers.

The full papers must be submitted to HON by the December 15, 2004, and should follow the IJMI guidelines available here