Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, http://www.iba.muni.cz

At a time when we are surrounded by the everyday use of communication and information technologies very closely linked to the Internet, it is challenging to discern the accuracy, truthfulness and objectivity of the information presented and published. This book and its chapters aim to provide an overview of selected projects and activities across the academic and governmental domains focused on data processing and visualisation. It is crucial to recognise that, given the volume of data of varying quality that we now have at our disposal, we need to focus much more on understanding, identifying, and distributing correct information and inferences directly from the data. This is the main reason why this book was written. The individual case studies focus on examples of both good and bad practices, drawing on experiences from real-life projects. Data should always serve as a basis for decision-making processes and mechanisms, but only if they are correctly processed, understood, and, above all, interpreted. There are various ways to present results over descriptive statistics and data analysis, from summary tables to static graphs to interactive web visualisations. It is only possible to say which type and presentation format is best with additional information (such as the target audience or primary purpose of use). The selected chapters in this book highlight the complete lifecycle of understanding, processing, visualising and validating data so that all of the critical components of this process are remembered.

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The 6th year of the MEFANET conference was held in Brno, Czech Republic, from Tuesday 27th to Wednesday 28th November 2012. This conference provides a regular opportunity for teachers and students from medical faculties from all over the Czech Republic and Slovakia to meet experts in health care informatics and providers of electronical support in the education. Apart from methodical and educational aspects of e-learning at medical faculties in general, this year's conference has again dealt with the impact of this phenomenon on a specific medical specialty: a thematically focused symposium addressed the fields of orthopaedics, rheumatology and physiotherapy.

In September 2005, a web portal on cancer incidence and mortality in the Czech Republic was released with the primary objective to provide representative data on this topic. Providing relevant information on cancer epidemiology in the Czech Republic to foreign partners is another key objective of this project. Extensive information on cancer epidemiology in the Czech Republic is now available to anyone who wants to find out more about the situation in Czech regions, to compare Czech data with the foreign ones or to examine long-term incidence and mortality trends for individual cancers, for example.

The second conference MEFANET, which was focused on e-learning and health informatics in the education of medical disciplines, took place in Hotel Voronez (Brno, Czech Republic) on 20-21 November 2008. Apart from general topics related to modern methods of education, the last year's conference (MEFANET 2008) concentrated on the specialties of dentistry, stomatology and maxillofacial traumatology.

At 4th conference of Czech and Slovak faculties of medicine with international participation, focused on e-learning and medical informatics in the education of medical disciplines MEFANET 2010, the participants and the representatives of medical faculties involved in the MEFANET project obtained the printed version of proceedings from the conference MEFANET 2009. The print of this proceedings is 1,000 copies; the proceedings is not for sale and was distributed to all Czech and Slovak medical faculties, each of them having obtained 60-100 copies. The electronic version of MEFANET 2009 proceedings is available for download below.

The DIOS project was launched in 2006 with the primary objective to enhance the oncologists' awareness of the significance of dose intensity monitoring in anticancer chemotherapy. Another objective was to develop a fully electronic version of chemotherapy regimens which could complement the Principles of Cytostatic Therapy in Malignant Tumours, published by the Czech Oncological Society of CMA JEP. The advantages of the electronic version include easy updates, as well as the possibility of direct use for clinical practice and/or educational purposes. The electronic standards can also be used as templates for hospital information system databases.

This e-learning educational textbook is dedicated to analysis of data from genomic and proteomic high-throughput experiments, such as microarrays, MASS spectrometry, 2-D gel eletrophoresis and DNA sequencing.The book discuss all the important analytical steps from pre-processing through differential gene(protein)-expression to pathways and meta-analysis of multiple experiments. Interactive examples in R and lectures in video format are provided. This educational material contains contributions of different experts in the field from all over the Europe. The content in this e-learning material will be up-dated and extended so that it reflects the latest knowledge in this field.

At the occasion of Coordinating Council meeting in June 2009, the representatives of medical faculties involved in the MEFANET project obtained the printed version of proceedings from the conference MEFANET 2008. The print of this proceedings is 1,000 copies; the proceedings is not for sale and was distributed to all Czech and Slovak medical faculties, each of them having obtained 60-100 copies. The electronic version of MEFANET 2008 proceedings is available for download here.

Editors: Ing. Daniel Schwarz, Ph.D. (IBA LF MU), doc. RNDr. Ladislav Dušek, Ph.D. (IBA LF MU), prof. MUDr. Stanislav Štípek, DrSc. (1. LF UK), prof. MUDr. Vladimír Mihál, CSc. (LF UP), Dr. Chris Paton (National Institute of Health Innovation, University of Auckland, New Zealand)