Dear Colleagues,

On March 18th we held for the third time the annual JHPOR Conference, focused on telemedicine, with a special session regarding patient registries. The attendance was close to 200 people, who had the pleasure of listening to lectures by many international experts, such as prof. Nello Martini from The Italian Medicines Agency, Hans-Jochen Brauns from German Society for Telemedicine, Pavel Vorobiev, Liubov Krasnova, Andrey Uriev and Andrey Vorobiev from ISPOR Russia Chapter,  and also representatives from American Telemedicine Association.

Our new issue features some articles that are consistent with subjects raised on said Conference.

Monika Krasińska in her article analyzes issues concerning medical registries and European Union data-protection law. Joanna Śliwa et al. in their publication expose security risks associated with telemedicine services and provide some guidelines for protection of the medical records. Joanna Wutke et al. in their article assess potential of telemedicine for psychiatrists and other specialists.

This issue also features a very thorough article by Szkultecka-Dębek et al. regarding assessment of Quality of Life of patients with thrombocytopenia using Thrombocytopenia Symptoms and their Impact on Patients Daily Activities assessment Vignette (TSIDAV).

We cover this time a variety of other topics, such as budget impact analysis of breast cancer in the Russian Federation, issues associated with Diabetic Macular Edema treatment in Poland, and many others.

You will also find in this issue a review of the Polish Pharmacoeconomical Society activities in the 1st half of 2016.

At the same time I cordially invite all interested to the 4th JHPOR Conference, focused this time on severe asthma and rheumatic diseases, which will be held in March 2017 in Warsaw.

We hope you will enjoy this issue of Journal of Health Policy & Outcomes Research.

Sincerely,
prof. Karina Jahnz-Różyk, Editor-in-Chief

Dr Joanna Lis,  Deputy Editor-in-Chief