The above articles, authored by prominent AMIA members, resulted from discussions examining e-Health, global partnerships, and local solutions during a month-long conference convened by the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, during the summer of 2008. More than 200 leaders, representing health care, technology, finance, policy, and government sectors, attended the meeting. Full text of the articles is online at www.healthaffairs.org.

"This series of articleslike discussions at the Bellagio meetingfocuses on how to leverage e-Health to advance health services in particularly underserved environments," says AMIA President & CEO Ted Shortliffe. "E-health applications to improve health care quality and access in resource-constrained portions of the world are an interest area that has grown into a major initiative for AMIA since then."

Health Affairs contributor William Hersh, MD, chair of the Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health and Sciences University, and a popular AMIA distance-learning instructor, says, "The principles of informatics apply no matter whether you are in a developed or developing country: For e-Health to succeed, you need soun
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