OVER VIEW  
Progress in information processing and information technology is changing our societies. There is a significant social and economic relevance of information technology for medicine and healthcare especially improving quality of health care. It is expected that these developments will continue in the next decade, probably at least at the same pace as can be observed today. We need to have skilled manpower to meet the demand of the present and future. For a systemic processing of information in medicine and in health care, and for an appropriate and responsible application of information technology, health and IT professionals are needed who are well educated in health informatics. Raising the scope and providing high quality of education in the field of health and medical informatics, and having well educated health professionals world wide would considerably help to raise the quality and efficiency of healthcare. It is also pertinent to note that no such facility has been established yet in India. Many countries in the world look for skilled IT professionals from India and such infrastructure once established can meet their requirement and in turn offer new avenues for employment. Regional, national and international collaboration with medical, IT and technical institutions will be established in teaching and research and application fields which will broaden the scope of the proposed resource center and result in solving several application issues and development of world class products.
  

Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), Lucknow, India is the first academic medical institution in the country to take the initiative to establish a School of Telemedicine and Biomedical Informatics in it’s campus in the year 2006. While, the school was getting built with the support of Uttar Pradesh state government, a project was submitted to the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communication and IT, Government of India to support creation of laboratory infrastructure to carry out inter-disciplinary research in the field of Health IT This project is aiming at creation of a resource center at national level to attract researchers from various fields of science related to health information science and technology to develop research collaboration.