Editor's Introduction: A Framework for Medical Information Science

The original call for participation closed with the following paragraph.Clearly the scope of the meeting is too broad to suggest resolution in a one day workshop. Nevertheless, it should be possible to establish a framework for a continued dialogue.For those who were able to participate in the workshop, the day was both stimulating and exhausting. The reader can judge if we indeed did establish a framework for a continued dialogue.The technology is moving so rapidly that it is difficult to determine where we will be in five or ten years from now. Much of what we do in MIS is a linear extension of our experience with older generations of equipment. However, we also are considering new paradigms which may result in dramatic leaps over old barriers. In a field where there is a technologic half-life of five years, there is questionable benefit in twenty years’ experience. The microcomputer revolution has changed our perception of computers. I sense even more dramatic changes in the next decade. How these chan...