Healthcare brings together both practitioners and information technologists in unique partnerships that fuel rapid advancements in the delivery of care. In this field of constant discovery, healthcare's use of information and communication technology continually expands the limits of the domain and has led to stunning innovations and intensely practical outcomes.

Frontiers of Health Informatics - Redefining Healthcare seeks to capture this diversity of achievement in linking science and medicine with information technology. Importantly, it looks at the practical systems and process issues that need to be addressed now, to meet the challenges of the future. HIC'09 is built around four key information technology themes that are driving change and innovation in Australian healthcare. Each theme looks to analyse the leading edge technologies that are being implemented and the opportunities they create.

• Personalised medicine and bioinformatics
  • Discovering new knowledge in biomedicine
  • Applying knowledge in biomedicine: Informatics role in translational medicine
  • Biomedical systems: delivering personalised medicine
• Next generation electronic health records
  • Integrating new health data sets
  • Data visualising and data management
  • Personal health records
  • Privacy, security and confidentiality
• New Models of Healthcare Delivery
  • Monitoring systems
  • Assistive Technologies
  • Smart Homecare environments
  • Telehealth, telecare and video conferencing and virtual reality environments
  • Information innovations to support healthcare communities and social networking
  • Knowledge and education
• Preventative healthcare and wellness
  • Chronic disease management
  • Building wellness: engaging and supporting the health consumer
  • Population monitoring and preventative health
  • Options for innovative care delivery
  • Genes and proteins to predict and prevent ill-health

Building on HIC08's theme of The Person in the Centre, Frontiers of Health Informatics will showcase the technologies and processes that are required to deliver the patient centric healthcare that was so clearly articulate. As an integral part of the program, the conference, through its panels and workshops will deliver a final position statement on the role of technology in redefining the delivery of healthcare in Australia.