Editorial: From "Information Technology in Biomedicine" to "Biomedical and Health Informatics"

The IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine (T-ITB) will be retitled as the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI) starting in January, 2013. The IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine was launched with four issues per year in 1997. After more than a decade of steady growth, the journal ventured into new challenges: open access of publication and rapid expansion in all health informatics-related fields. In this concluding issue of T-ITB the authors would like to take this opportunity to report briefly some historical retrospectives of journal with known statistics of it and to extend a special appreciation from the current editorial office to readers, authors, reviewers, associate editors, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) relevant committees, IEEE publication staff, and especially two previous Editors-in-Chief for their great contributions to make the Transactions successful. The launching of the J-BHI as the new title of T-ITB is an outcome of the vision of the EMBS's 2011 Publications Committee. The title change and scope revision were accomplished through more than two years of team efforts by T-ITB Editorial Board, EMBS Executive Office, Publication Committee, and AdCom. In the next editorial to be published on January issue of J-BHI, we will discuss the rationale behind the title change and scope revision as well as the grand challenges in health informatics with future perspectives.