Abstract
The aim of this panel was to enlarge the involvement of the EFMI community in preparing the 40th anniversary of EFMI in 2016 and the 50th of IMIA in 2017 and also to identify the pioneering activities in EFMI countries and all potential sources of data. But, a comprehensive presentation of the history of Medical Informatics (MI) required a systematic and multiaxial approach, to provide not only a list of events, journals, organizations or people, but also to analyze the characteristics of each epoch, to reveal the trends and to recall both successes and failures.
By offering such a dynamic view, the "history" became a tool for a realistic estimation of the impact of medical informatics on various domains-healthcare, computer science, industry, education, even on our daily life.