From Septem­ber 17 to 21, 2023, the 68th Annu­al Meet­ing of the German Asso­ci­a­tion for Medical Infor­mat­ics, Biom­e­try and Epidemi­ol­o­gy (GMDS e. V.) will take place at the Heil­bronn Bildungscampus. I am very pleased that our univer­si­ty will host this renowned scien­tif­ic confer­ence for nation­al health research. In this context, my special thanks go to the two confer­ence pres­i­dents Prof. Dr. Alexan­dra Reichen­bach and Dr. Moni­ka Pobiruchin, to the local orga­niz­ing commit­tee and to the plan­ning commit­tee around Prof. Dr. Martin Haag, which is respon­si­ble for the scien­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tion of the annu­al confer­ence. The members of the Faculty of Informatics and all other partic­i­pants make an impor­tant contri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of the research field at the inter­face of medi­cine and infor­mat­ics by plan­ning and imple­ment­ing the confer­ence and contribut­ing their expertise.

The plan­ning for this confer­ence, which is expect­ed to attract around 800 inter­na­tion­al partic­i­pants, has already start­ed in 2019; and thus two years before the offi­cial deci­sion by GMDS in Septem­ber 2021, when it was announced “the annu­al confer­ence of GMDS is coming to Heil­bronn Univer­si­ty”. What a great success!

True to the motto of the confer­ence “Science. Close to the people”, I would like to call not only on univer­si­ty members but also on the gener­al public to take advan­tage of this unique oppor­tu­ni­ty and active­ly partic­i­pate in the vari­ous possi­bil­i­ties for knowl­edge trans­fer in the form of lectures, work­shops and citi­zen dialogues.

Person­al­ly, I am already look­ing forward to a live­ly hustle and bustle on the Bildungscam­pus, the person­al exchange with inter­nal and exter­nal experts in the vari­ous fields and the 50th anniver­sary of our Medical Informatics program, which will be cele­brat­ed during the confer­ence. On behalf of the univer­si­ty manage­ment, I wish the confer­ence pres­i­dents — repre­sent­ing all partic­i­pants — a success­ful event and all visi­tors an excit­ing, stim­u­lat­ing exchange of knowl­edge and an inter­est­ing time in Heil­bronn, on the Bildungscam­pus and at Heil­bronn University.

Warm greet­ings

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Oliv­er Lenzen