B10:    Standardisation, structure and exchange of information in primary care: the aim of clinical coding

Marc Jamoulle MD has been a practising general practitioner for 25 years in Charleroi, an industrial city in the French-speaking region of Belgium. He got a degree in tropical medicine in 1981 and a MPH in 1984 at the Public Health School of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in which he is still a research collaborator in the unit "Médecine de Famille et Soins Primaires" (Family medicine and PHC) in the department of health policy.

The founder of a multidisciplinary primary health care centre, he has been involved in research in General Practice since 1985. His main interests are in patient-doctor relationships, addiction, information systems in health care and quality of medical information on the Internet

He is a member of the WONCA International Classification Committee (WICC), co-author of ICPC and ICPC-2-E in English and translator and editor of the French version known as CISP -2 and CISP-2-E. He is the President of the International French Speaking Association of ICPC users (CISP-Club). He manages several GP/FM related sites and ICPC training sites on the Internet.

His main research area is actually the Euromeddata project, an EU funded project on availability of data in health care in Europe in which he has the responsibility of the PHC field.

Nick Booth MD is a general practitioner from the North of England who is a Centre Director of the Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Since taking up his academic post in Newcastle University, he has been involved in the Prodigy, Prestige and COGENT decision support projects, several health messaging projects, including the TextBase project, and is an active member of CEN TC 251 Working groups I and II, in the fields of record architecture, messaging and continuity of care. His current work is as project director of the Durham EHR project (Part of the NHS ERDIP Programme) and Information in the Consulting Room (NHS RDD ICT project).

He is immediate past chair of the Primary Health Care Specialist Group of the British Computer Society, and holds other significant national political appointments, including being a member of the Joint Computing Group of the BMA and Royal College of General Practitioners, a member of the Medical Information Group (a medical professional advisory forum on Health Informatics with wide medical representation from all sectors of the NHS and National Health Service), and other posts within the Royal College of General Practitioners locally and nationally. He has been interested in clinical terminology and classification since 1991, was involved in the creation of the MIQUEST project and the formation of the Collection of GP Health Data projects, and is currently the UK representative on the World Organisation of Family Doctors International Classification Committee and a co-author of ICPC2 (the second edition of the International Classification of Primary Care) and is the UK Primary Care member of the SNOMED International Editorial Board. He is an editorial adviser for the British Medical Journal. He also lectures, both nationally and internationally, on topics related to practical informatics in primary care.

Robert Bernstein MD is a Geographical Full Time (GFT) Faculty Member and Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of Ottawa, appointed in 1981. He is the Head of the Medical Informatics Research Group of the Department. He is Co-chairman and founding member of the Institute for Primary Care Informatics and was a member of the steering committee of the Ontario Family and General Practice Data Standards Project. He has represented the College of Family Physicians of Canada at the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) Committee on Coding and Classification since 1990. He continues to be Active Attending medical staff of the Ottawa General Hospital (and former Chief of the Department) and at Elizabeth Bruyere Pavilion of SCOHS (Sisters of Charity of Ottawa Health Services) in Family Medicine and Chronic Care. As a member of the College of Family Physicians of Canada Clinical Practice Management Network Project, he was the chair of the National Database Committee and a member of the Steering and Electronic Medical Records Committees. He is a reviewer for Canadian Medical Association Journal and an internal reviewer for NHRDP (National Health Research Development Program). As well, he is a researcher in HEALNet (Health Evidence and Application Linkage Network) a Federal Government National Centres of Excellence Program, and the Clinical Epidemiology Unit of the Department of Family Medicine of the University of Ottawa. He is a member of the American Medical Informatics Association and a founding member of the AMIA Family Practice Working Group.