Official Journal of the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI)
Former title: International Journal of Bio-Medical Computing

All submissions should be made through Elsevier's Editorial System (EES) via http://ees.elsevier.com/ijmi). Authors should carefully select the editor that will manage their submission:
• Authors invited to submit a paper for a special/topical issue of IJMI should select the designated editor for that issue
• Review papers and book reviews should be send to the editor for reviews
• Papers on nursing informatics should be send to the editor for nursing informatics
• All other submissions should go to the editor in charge for the region where the corresponding authors resides (either the Americas including Canada and the Latin-American countries, or the rest of the world)

General Considerations
IJMI has adopted the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Below, some of the important issues are highlighted. Visit http://www.icmje.org for more details.

Authorship
To qualify as an author, one should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted. Note that all authors should qualify for authorship and all that qualify should be authors.

Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. Financial support like grants should also be mentioned in the acknowledgements section.

Conflict of interest
At the end of the text, under the heading "Conflict of interest statement" all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations. Also relations other than of financial and personal nature can be a potential conflict of interest, for example in an evaluation study where the evaluators are also the developers of the system tested. Such potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed as well.

Role of the funding source
All sources of funding should be declared in an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should state so.

Randomised controlled trials
All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in the Journal should include a completed Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) flow chart. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information. The Journal has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which requires, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, the registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. The use of an information system is considered to be a medical intervention even when it mediates its effects on patient care through a physician or nurse.

Ethics
Work on human beings that is submitted to the Journal should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki, recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. (see http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm). The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work. Also, studies that involve non-patient humans, like observations of physicians' and nurses' behaviour with and without IT, should safeguard the well-being of the subjects studied and hence being submitted for approval by an ethics committee or institutional review board.
Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institutional guidelines. Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in your paper. Patients have a right to privacy. Therefore identifying information, including patients' images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in videos, recordings, written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable). If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Elsevier must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Elsevier on request. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.

Structure of manuscripts
The following types of contributions will be published: (i) Papers reporting original work; (ii) Interpretative reviews; (iii) Technical notes; (iv) Letters to the Editor

All manuscripts, except letters to the editor, should have the following structure:
• Title page, including keywords
• Structured abstract
• Body of the manuscript
• Authors' contributions
• Acknowledgements
• Statement on conflicts of interest
• Summary table
• References
• Appendices (if applicable)

Manuscripts not conforming to this structure may be returned to author without prejudice but without review.

Title page
The first page should include the title of the manuscript, the authors of the manuscript with their affiliation, the name and full address and contact details (phone and email) of the corresponding author, and a list of upto keywords. In the author(s) interest these keywords should be from the collection used in MeSH published by the US National Library of Medicine ( http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html). Considerable care should be used in selecting keywords because they will be used for subject indexing in this Journal and in other databases.

Structured abstract
The page following the front page should contain a structured abstract that accurately and concisely describes the purpose, the methods, the results and conclusions of the study in the paper. The authors may choose also to include a statement on the limitations of the study.

Body of the manuscript
The paper proper will begin on the third page of the typescript. An organization of materials into an introduction, methods, results and discussion 'also known as IMRAD' is the preferred format.

Summary table
The authors shall provide a table with in 2-4 bullets statements on 'what was already known on the topic' and also in 2-4 bullets statements on 'what this study added to our knowledge'. Not that the second part of the table should not list the results of the study as such. It should address what this study has proven and what insights have been gained.

References Each bibliographic reference should be identified in the text by a number in square brackets (e.g. [3]) in order of appearance and be listed in numerical order at the end of the typescript. The referencing style as used by the NLM are preferred (see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html for examples) Abbreviations for journals are those used in MeSH published by the US National Library of Medicine.
Although not encouraged, reference to dissertation or so-called technical reports is permissible. In such cases, sufficient information must be given in the citation for the reader to be able to reach the original report. References to electronic documents that can be found on the internet should be accompanied by their URL, and the date of the last visit.

Preparation of Supplementary Data
Elsevier now accepts electronic supplementary material (e-components) to support and enhance the description of your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips, forms, questionnaires and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect at http://www.sciencedirect.com. Since your material will be made available without any further processing, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions

Format of submissions
• Manuscripts must be word-processed (preferably in Microsoft Word format), written in English and double spaced with about 3 cm margins all around. All pages should be numbered. • Queries about other submission formats should be directed to authorsupport@elsevier.com.
• Measurements and units should be expressed with their exact abbreviations in SI.
• Abbreviations may be used to replace often occurring phrases, but only when the abbreviation as such is used in communications in the domain. Abbreviations should be introduced in parentheses when the full phrase is used for the first time in the body of the manuscript. For example: 'The personal health record (PHR) is considered to remedy the shortcomings of existing EHRs. ', assuming EHR has been defined before. Henceforth, the abbreviation should be used, except in section headings and subheadings where full text is preferred. Abbreviation should not contain periods or intervening space between letters. Universally known abbreviations (USA for United States of America) need not be defined. Avoid using abbreviations in the abstract of the manuscript.
• All figures and tables, including charts, graphs, photographs, computer printouts and the like must be included in the manuscript at their appropriate place as well as separately uploaded on the EES, each as a separate file.
• Tables are consecutively numbered with roman numerals, figures with arabic numerals.
• Each figure and table should be accompanied by a legend that provides sufficient details to understand the figure or table. Any abbreviations in the figure or table should be explained in the legend. All legends of the tables and figures should also be collected in numerical order in a separate document that is to be uploaded on the EES.
Figures submitted must be of sufficient quality for direct reproduction. • Computer printouts must be completely legible. There are charges for colour illustrations in print. However colour figures will automatically be available online at no extra charge, even if the print version is monochrome.
• The Artwork Quality Control Tool is now available to EES users. To help authors submit high-quality artwork early in the process, this tool checks the submitted artwork and other file types against the artwork requirements outlined in the Artwork Instructions to Authors on http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Copyright
Submission of a paper to International Journal of Medical Informatics is understood to imply that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and that the author(s) permission to publish his/her (their) article(s) in this Journal implies the exclusive authorization of the publishers to deal with all issues concerning the copyright therein. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/authors). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in such cases : contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Philadelphia, PA, USA: Tel. (+1) 215 238 7869; Fax (+1) 215 238 2239; e-mail healthpermissions@elsevier.com . Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

Proofs One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 or later, available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. This proof is only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Additional paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.

Miscellaneous
• The International Journal of Medical Informatics has no page charges.
• Publishing houses interested in having their books reviewed should contact our editor for reviews Patrice Degoulet (patrice.degoulet@egp.aphp.fr).
• Authors in Japan please note: Upon request, Elsevier Japan will provide authors with a list of people who can check and improve the English of their paper (before submission). Please contact our Tokyo office: Elsevier Japan, 4F Higashi-Azabu, 1-Chome Bldg, 1-9-15 Higashi-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0044, Japan; Tel.: (+81) (3) 5561 5037; Fax : (+81) (3) 5561 5047; Email: jp.info@elsevier.com.