After 20 years of working in the field of medical informatics, this paper summarizes career highlights, the state of education and research on health informatics in Austria as well as future prospects of the field. In 1981, the Austrian Working Group Medical Informatics was founded that now represents Austria within IMIA and EFMI. Austria has a good maturation of clinical IT and is now on the way to establish a comprehensive national eHealth infrastructure and a lifelong electronic health record (ELGA – Elektronische Krankenakte) to exchange patient-related data between health care institutions. Future prospects of health IT in Austria include patient-centred care across health care institutions, an increasing demand for health informatics experts with various backgrounds, secondary use of clinical data and health IT to support patient empowerment.

Institute of Medical Informatics UMIT University for Health Sciences Medical Informatics and Technology Hall in Tirol Austria