A JOINT Press RELEASE FROM THE POSTGRADUATE INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF COLOMBO and The HEALTH INFORMATICS SOCIETY OF SRI LANKA

An innovative medical journal is to be launched in January 2010 : The birth of  “The Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics”.

Bio-Medical informatics encompasses the fields of health informatics, health care informatics and medical informatics. This discipline is the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care. It deals with the resources, devices and methods required to facilitate and optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and bio-medicine. Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, bio-medical information and communication systems. It is also generally applicable to a variety of areas such as clinical care, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, other para-medical disciplines and bio-medical research.

The Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics, which is due to be launched in January 2010, would be a joint official publication of The Post-Graduate Institute of Medicine of The University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and The Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka. This is the only journal of Bio-Medical Informatics in Sri Lanka and is designed to publish original research articles and scholarly critiques on bio-medical informatics. This quarterly publication, presented as an exclusive e-journal, would be electronically distributed widely in Sri Lanka and abroad and bears the ISSN number 2012-6077.

The scope of the journal, the publication policies and many other details are available in its home page accessed by registration through the web site www.sljol.info. The Author Guidelines in the section on “about the journal” provides comprehensive details regarding the exact specifications required for submitted articles. The journal would provide free, full text access to all registered users, completely free of charge. The provision of immediate open access to all its content is based on the fundamental principle of making research freely available to the public in an effort towards supporting a greater global exchange of knowledge.                                                                     

The Editorial Board would be pleased to entertain erudite articles on bio-medical informatics for this journal. All submissions should be made electronically through the internet via the journal web site.

The Inaugural Issue of The Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-Medical Informatics would be formally and ceremonially initiated in the first week of January 2010.     

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Vidyajyothi Professor Rezvi Sheriff             Dr. Vajira H.W. Dissanayake

Director                                                                      President

Postgraduate Institute of Medicine             Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka

University of Colombo