EFMI Executive Board Elections Results

The European Federation for Medical Informatics is delighted to announce the election results of the EFMI Executive Board for the period November 2020-2022. After the council that gathered on Thursday 30th April 2020, has unanimously elected as President Elect of EFMI Board Mrs. Catherine Chronaki, to succeed Prof. Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar in November 2020 as 21st President of EFMI. The new EFMI Executive Board composition that will take office in Autumn 2020, is formed as follows:

  • President, Catherine Chronaki
  • Vice President, Louise B. Pape-Haugaard
  • Past President, Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar
  • Secretary, Alfred Winter
  • Treasurer, Carlos Luis Parra Calderón
  • Institutions Membership Officer, Lars Lindsköld
  • Executive Officer, Rebecca Randell
  • Publication Officer, Parisis Gallos

Ex Officio without vote Assistant to EFMI Board, Patrick Weber

The new President elect, Mrs. Chronaki is Secretary General at the HL7 Europe Foundation, the European office of HL7 International engaged on digital health policy and interoperability initiatives. Mrs. Chronaki has engaged in eHealth projects since the early 90’s when she joined FORTH-ICS to engage in the design, implementation, and evaluation of a system for the retrieval of medical images by content. Since then she has played a key role within National and European eHealth projects, addressing the wider scope of eHealth: health Information Infrastructures employing interoperability standards for integrated Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and eHealth services. Author of 100+ papers, she has served as Associate Editor IEEE Transactions for Information Technology in Biomedicine, and on the program committee of major eHealth conferences. She serves on the Board of HL7 Hellas, and she is a member the eHealth Stakeholders group of the European Commission  (2013-2016, 2017-2019, 2020-2023). She has also served on the HL7 International Board (2008-2012) and as secretary to the Nucleus of the eCardiology WG of the European Society of Cardiology (2012-2015). She led the Trillium Bridge project operational arm of the EU/US MoU Roadmap, and the eStandards support action which delivered standardization roadmap for large scale eHealth deployment in Europe. She was scientific coordinator for Trillium-II, continuation of Trillium Bridge project aiming to scale up adoption of international patient summary standards. Currently, Mrs. Chronaki is a member of the FAIR4Health team at the HL7 Europe foundation working to bridge FAIR data sets with FHIR standards.

Mrs. Chronaki, said of her appointment as EFMI President, that it is a great honour, to be set in charge of the EFMI organisation, that she has been serving the council since 2012, and on the board since 2016. Also, she stated: “Deeply honoured to be the President Elect of EFMI, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the EFMI Council and all EFMI members for their support and trust. In these hard times that the world and the humankind is facing, it is crucial for EFMI members to stay active, working on the front line of health informatics research to support coordinated response to the pandemic and its aftermath. EFMI Working Groups, Institutional members and National Societies already respond to challenge. Moving ahead, we look forward to an increasingly digital EFMI, even more active across WHO-Europe area, in IMIA, but also through bilateral cooperation, taking part in constructive dialogue and debate, advancing the science and technology of medical informatics for the benefit of society.

The President Prof. Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar on the occasion of the elections mentioned: We have entered into a new era that is going to leave a mark to the globally and to all the medical informatics community. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 crisis we had to cancel or turn to digital many of our activities including the long waited MIE2020 in Geneva, Switzerland. As a strong community EFMI takes this challenge as an opportunity to move forward to enhance new methods of collaboration and explore new frontiers in medical informatics. I congratulate the President Elect of EFMI and the incoming EFMI Executive Board 2020-2022, and I am confident that they will lead EFMI to even greater achievements, responding to the demands of the challenges of our times.

About EFMI: The European Federation for Medical Informatics Association (EFMI) is the leading organisation in medical informatics in Europe with presence in 32 countries. EFMI is organized as a non-profit organisation concerned with the theory and practice of Information Science and Technology within Health and Health Science in a European context.