Book excerpt: The European Federation for Medical Informatics is a regional coordinat ing body. The Congress in Dublin. MIE 82. from 21st to 25th March 1982. is the fourth in the series following MIE 78 in Cambridge. MIE 79 in Berlin. There was a break in 1980 for the World Congress - MEDINFO 8- in Tokyo. This was followed by MIE 81 in Toulouse. The rationale behind these congresses is the scientific need to share results and ideas. and the educational need to train a wide variety of professional staff in the potential of Medical Informatics in health care delivery. All the caring professions are involved. doctors. scientists. nurses. pharma cists. paramedical staff. administrators. health care planners. commu nity physicj-US'I,!Dedical educationalists. epidemiologists. statisti cians. o. pe-~atio'ns 'analysts. together with specialists from the comput ing profession dealin~ with systems analysis. hardware. software. lan guages. data ba, s~s and marketing of systems. The pre-publi~~tion of'conference proceedings from a multi-stream con ference is partic~l~t~y valuable in a rapidly expanding multidisciplin ary field su~h as'M~dical Informatics. It enables participants to fol low work presented at sessions that they are unable to attend. More im portantly. is also provides a permanent record with relevant bibliogra phy for other workers to assess which groups are active and in which areas. All the papers have been refereed and the referees' suggestions incorporated in the final texts. Rapid publication. using camera-ready copy. reduces the time available for editing and indexing.