The only way for improving our citizens health status is to prevent diseases by engaging citizens to improving their lifestyle, to set up dedicated preventive programs to citizens at risk due to individual or family dispositions, to improve quality and safety of citizens if becoming patients, to optimize the care process towards higher efficiency, to optimize aftercare and rehabilitation. Such program requires a comprehensive view on health, optimal collaboration and cross-fertilization between the different health services and the multidisciplinary domains they represent. Such a comprehensive and interdisciplinary health services approach doesn’t work without the application of advanced technology.

The distribution of health services and the required flexibility of the settings involved changes traditional doctor-patient relationships, also increasing the self-responsibility of the citizens. This requires appropriate social environments as well as the presence of capabilities and trust, what requires appropriate awareness about need, solutions, conditions and frameworks for both the services providers and first of all the citizens. This includes the ability of citizens and patients to access the right information, to participate in the right actions and to adopt the right consequences, covering occupational environment, home, but also hospitalizations.

The rapid developments in the field of medical and care ICT, due to Internet and iPhone, etc., entail chances and challenges, include benefits and risks. On both the patient and the provider side, there is an essential need for overcoming the apparent lack of awareness about the existence of Health Information Technology, about how it can be used, about how it should be used, about the benefits, legal and social implications.

Therefore ICMCC will organize on 13-14 June 2011 the first Global Health IT Awareness (GHITA) event. The scientific, architectural, technological, and policy challenges as well as the social, educational, and behavioral prerequisites are the topics the GHITA-ICMCC 2011 deals with.