It is my great pleasure to introduce this special issue of LNSV comprising the sci- tific publications presented at ehealth 2009: The second Congress on Electronic Healthcare for the 21st Century, which took place in Istanbul, Turkey during September 23-25, 2009. Building on the first ehealth 2008 congress held in London, UK, the key topic of ehealth 2009 was investigating a realistic potential of the Internet in providing e- dence-based healthcare information and education to patients and global users. The proudly defined aim of ehealth 2009 -- bringing together the three medical sectors: academia, industry and global healthcare institutions -- was met and made the c- gress a truly unique event. The formal and informal discussions among the conference participants led to numerous stimuli for new collaborations. We accepted 26 full and 10 short technical presentations by speakers from all over the world, having received over 80 submissions. In addition to two keynotes, the commercial angle was provided by invited industrial speakers representing a wide range of healthcare IT companies including Corinne Marsolier of Cisco, Glenn Kenneth Bruun (CSAM Health), Luis Falcón (Thymbra) and Johan Muskens (Philips Research Europe), as well as international healthcare organizations such as Med-e-Tel represented by the international coordinator Frederic Lievens.

Session 1: Telehealth and Mobile Health Solutions

Model Checking for Robotic Guided Surgery
Intelligent Mobile Health Monitoring System (IMHMS)
Mobile Health Access for Diabetics in Rural Areas of Turkey - Results of a Survey
Session 2: Outbreak Management, Web 2.0 and Public Health Communication
Early Warning and Outbreak Detection Using Social Networking Websites: The Potential of Twitter
Communicating with Public Health Organizations: An Inventory of Capacities in the European Countries
Transparency and Documentation in Simulations of Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Towards Evidence-Based Public Health Decisions and Communications
Session 3: EPR: Trust, Security and Decision Support
Prototyping a Personal Health Record Taking Social and Usability Perspectives into Account
Mixed-Initiative Argumentation: Group Decision Support in Medicine
Session 4: ICT Support for Patients and Healthcare Organizations
Enabling Technology to Advance Health-Protecting Individual Rights-Are We Walking the Talk?
Detecting Human Motion: Introducing Step, Fall and ADL Algorithms
The Costs of Non-training in Chronic Wounds: Estimates through Practice Simulation
Open Source Virtual Worlds and Low Cost Sensors for Physical Rehab of Patients with Chronic Diseases
Session 5: Evaluation of ICT in Healthcare
Data Triangulation in a User Evaluation of the Sealife Semantic Web Browsers
Adaptive Planning of Staffing Levels in Health Care Organisations
"Do Users Do What They Think They Do?"- A Comparative Study of User Perceived and Actual Information Searching Behaviour in the National Electronic Library of Infection
MEDEMAS -Medical Device Management and Maintenance System Architecture
ROC Based Evaluation and Comparison of Classifiers for IVFImplantation Prediction
Evaluation of Knowledge Development in a Healthcare Setting
Session 6: Healthcare Knowledge Management and Ontologies
Building and Using Terminology Services for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Semantic Description of Health Record Data for Procedural Interoperability
A Lexical-Ontological Resource for Consumer Healthcare
An Ontology of Therapies
Modelling and Decision Support of Clinical Pathways
With Intègre®, Leverage Every Medical Professionals' Skills and Expertise
Session 7: Web 2.0, Multimedia and Personalisation
Personality Diagnosis for Personalized eHealth Services
Collaboration through ICT between Healthcare Professionals: The Social Requirements of Health 2.0 Applications
A Web2.0 Platform in Healthcare Created on the Basis of the Real Perceived Need of the Elderly End User
Web 2.0 Artifacts in Healthcare Management Portals- State-of-the-Art in German Health Care Companies
Session 8: eHealth Automation and Decision Support
Compensation of Handicap and Autonomy Loss through e-Technologies and Home Automation for Elderly People in Rural Regions: An Actual Need for International Initiatives Networks
Modeling Market Shares of Competing (e)Care Providers
Security Protection on Trust Delegated Data in Public Mobile Networks
Session 9: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Communicating with Public Health Organizations: Technical Solution.