Editorial: From "Information Technology in Biomedicine" to "Biomedical and Health Informatics"

The IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine (T-ITB) will be retitled as the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI) starting in January, 2013. The IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine was launched with four issues per year in 1997. After more than a decade of steady growth, the journal ventured into new challenges: open access of publication and rapid expansion in all health informatics-related fields. In this concluding issue of T-ITB the authors would like to take this opportunity to report briefly some historical retrospectives of journal with known statistics of it and to extend a special appreciation from the current editorial office to readers, authors, reviewers, associate editors, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) relevant committees, IEEE publication staff, and especially two previous Editors-in-Chief for their great contributions to make the Transactions successful. The launching of the J-BHI as the new title of T-ITB is an outcome of the vision of the EMBS's 2011 Publications Committee. The title change and scope revision were accomplished through more than two years of team efforts by T-ITB Editorial Board, EMBS Executive Office, Publication Committee, and AdCom. In the next editorial to be published on January issue of J-BHI, we will discuss the rationale behind the title change and scope revision as well as the grand challenges in health informatics with future perspectives.

AS many of you might know already, the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine (T-ITB) will be retitled as the IEEE J ournal of Biomedical and H ealth Informatics (J-BHI) starting in January, 2013. Changing a title of any journal is not an easy job, and changing a title of a successfully well-established journal is an even more difficult decision to make. The entire process of title change and scope revision took more than two years from the initial proposal to the final approval by the IEEE TAB. As this concluding issue of T-ITB is about to go to press, we would like to take this opportunity to report briefly some historical retrospectives of journal with known statistics of it and to extend a special appreciation from the current editorial office to readers, authors, reviewers, associate editors, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) relevant committees, IEEE publication staff, and especially two previous Editors-in-Chief for their great contributions to make the Transactions successful.