The evolving healthcare community

It's nearing the the end of the day one at the HealthGrid2010 and for me at least it's been very eventful so far!

The sun has been beating down on us all day here in Orsay but in the (thankfully air-conditioned) conference room there's been lots of discussion and presentations on how grid technologies and other e-Infrastructures are helping researchers across healthcare and the life sciences This morning the keynote speeches included a presentation from Kyriakos Baxevanidis giving the EC's take on the topic wheras this afternoon we've seen a variety of NGIs and and EU biomedical projects giving us their view on the future of research in this area.

HealthGrid has also posed the following question to all of the presenting initiatives: 'Do we need an EU structure for grid-related health and life sciences communities?' So far the consensus appears to be yes but only if this structure offers a definate added value to existing national and domain initiatives. Projects see its role as to provide a technical and community organisation e.g. to make grids easier to use, to provide training, and for development and maintenance to name but a few. A summary of the discussion will hopefully be posted up on the HealthGrid2010 website shortly (I'll add the link in when it is).

We're sure this discussion will continue over the next two days and beyond but what do you think? Do you work in life science or health research? How do you see the cmmunity evolving in the future?