Introduction

ESCTAIC 12TH ANNUAL MEETING Budapest, 25^27 October, 2001 GiulioTrillo' , MD, Chairman of ESCTAIC

In this issue of the Journal, you will ¢nd the abstracts of the free papers as well as the abstracts of some of the invited speakers presentations that were part of the 12th Annual meeting of the European Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care (ESCTAIC), that was held in Budapest, Hungary, from 25th to 27th of October, 2001. The meeting was jointly organised from ESCTAIC and the hosting society, the Hungarian Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine. As the Chairman of ESCTAIC I can only express my deepest gratitude to the Members of the Scienti¢c and Organising Committees for the tough work that was devoted in preparing this meeting, but I must admit that the results were well beyond everyone’s expectations. My gratitude goes to the Hungarian Friends, Dr.s Geza Nagy, Maria Janecsko, Ilona Bobek, Katalin Darvas, Laszlo Vass-Eysen, as well as to the International ESCTAIC Members that, as always in ESCTAIC history, devoted part of their precious professional and personal time in preparing such a successful meeting: Dr.s Bernhard Schwilk, Wolfgang Koller, Peter Biro and all the others. Participants from Hungary as well as from all over the World always crowded the conference room, actively participating in the scienti¢c sessions, and this both during the invited speakers as well as for the free paper sessions. This was, in my personal opinion, a clear sign that, although the number of the free paper presenters was relatively small, the quality was surprisingly high, and improving year after year. A special remark goes to the Industrial representatives: the Companies invited to join the meeting accepted the challenge of supporting a meeting held in Hungary. Most of them were eager to come to Budapest, and we all owe you much, since, as everybody understands, it is absolutely impossible to organise a scienti¢c meeting without the support of the Industry. During the meeting, as is customary for ESCTAIC, the General Assembly of the Society was held. During this event Dr Bernhard Schwilk from Ulm, Germany, Address correspondence to Giulio Trillo', MD, Chairman of ESCTAIC, Emergency Department, S.O.C. 118 ^ HEMS, A.O. S.M.M. Udine Hospital, 33100 Udine, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing 17: 61, 2002.  2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

resigned, for professional reasons, from the position of General Secretary (GS) of the Society. Dipl. Ing. Ingo Marsolek from Berlin, Germany, was appointed from the Assembly as the new GS. Thank you Benno for your help, and good work Ingo! The next meeting is scheduled to be held in Zu«rich, Switzerland, from 3rd to 5th of October, 2002. The scienti¢c program is already prepared as I’m writing this short introduction, and I can assure everyone that it is a really exciting one. A special issue of the Journal will be prepared for this occasion, to underline cooperation that exists between ESCTAIC and this Kluwer published Journal. My hopes to improve and strengthen this relationship in the future.