Dr Evelyn Hovenga, CQU Professor for Health Informatics, and Dr Sebastian Garde, CQU researcher in the Health Informatics Research Group (http://healthinformatics.cqu.edu.au), have founded the fully refereed electronic Journal of Health Informatics (eJHI).

The electronic Journal of Health Informatics (http://ejhi.net) is an international journal committed to scholarly excellence and dedicated to the advancement of Health Informatics and information technology in healthcare.

It is a journal for all health professions and informaticians of all levels.

The journal is hosted by Central Queensland University.

While Professor Hovenga (pictured above) took on the responsibility of Editor-in-Chief, Dr Garde (pictured below) is Managing Editor of the new journal.

Both are assisted by an editorial board that consists of an impressive selection of health professionals with expertise representing the entire Health Informatics discipline as well as the Asia-Pacific region.

The journal has now published its inaugural issue which was launched on Wednesday (29/03/06) at the E-health Research Colloquium by one of the editorial board members of the journal, Dr Anthony Maeder, Research Director of the Brisbane-based e-Health Research Centre (http://e-hrc.net).

The first issue consists of a selection of papers on Health Data Mining compiled by Professor Jim Warren, Chair in Health Informatics at the University of Auckland, NZ.

eJHI is a truly open access journal - it provides open access both for authors (i.e. no publication fee or page charges) and for readers (i.e. free access to all papers).

This open-access electronic journal provides a new forum for academic exchange in the field of Health Informatics.

It is established primarily for the benefit of the Asia-Pacific region but is also expected to be of interest to extended international audiences.

It is committed to scholarly excellence and is dedicated to the advancement of the Health Informatics discipline and to the use of information, knowledge and communication technologies by all working within the health industry.

The journal has been officially endorsed by the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) and the Australian College of Health Informatics (ACHI).

Topics covered deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of health informatics and informatics technology as they relate to all areas of health care.

The electronic Journal of Health Informatics recognises the value of both the academic and practice-based perspectives in Health Informatics and health information technology.

Therefore manuscripts are sought from all sectors of these disciplines.

Many future issues will be focussed on a special topic compiled by a guest editor to provide a fairly comprehensive overview of each topic.

Some planned issues to follow will cover Aged Care Informatics, Semantic Interoperability, Bridging the Digital Divide: Consumers, Clinicians and Computers, e- Health, and the use of Web Technologies in health.

Journal homepage: http://ejhi.net .

Flyer: http://healthinformatics.cqu.edu.au/downloads/EJHI-Flyer.pdf .