WORDS OF WELCOME

My first words in INABIS 2000 conference must be of gratitude to all those that trust in the Internet Association for Biomedical Sciences Congress (INABIS) as a forum to interchange scientific, clinical, and technical information.

We had a very difficult task: to be the successors of the INABIS'98 conference, a most important event presided by Dr. Henry Szechtman. In fact, his recommendations were essential to the organization of INABIS 2000. Also, we must thank Dr. Sumio Murase, INABIS founder (he will always be "our president") not only for his wise technical and organizational advices, but also for giving all of the opportunity to meet here, in cyberspace, with his magisterial idea of web-based congresses.

INABIS conference, although similar to other virtual congresses, has something very special: the work and collaboration of every invited symposium chair. They are the main actors, and they have to struggle not only with the difficult task of designing a complete session of presentations about each area, but also, I'm aware that some of them had to fight against some of our colleagues' fear to Internet.

We are most grateful to Roberto Rodriguez Morales, John Salamone, Merce Correa, Michel Ladouceur, Jesús García Domínguez, Teresa Cueto Guerreiro, Luis F. Alguacil, Carmen Pérez-García, Ana Morillo Castro, Iu. P. Tikhomirov, Daniel Rincón Prada, Mariano Alvira, Peter H. Yu, Angel Fueyo LOrente, Daniel Camporro Fernández, Ernesto León Rodríguez Flórez, Astrid Lorena Perafán Ledezma, R. Loch Macdonald, Janos Nemeth, Mikhail Soloviev, Daniel Rodriguez-Ithurralde, Silvia Olivera Bravo, Jeremy Martin Henley, Concepción Pérez Hernández, Ana Reguera Espelet, Jose Luis Martinez Chacón, Vivek Dixit, Yukinobu Takimoto, Richard M. Kostrzewa, Jacques Callebert, Adolfo Gustavo Sadile, Joseph A. Sergeant, Mary Solanto, Gregory M. Brown, Shiu Fun Pang, Athineos Philippou, John H. Zhang, Rui Wang, Des Richardson, Prem Ponka, Jean Lud Cadet, Bernhard H.J. Juurlink, Nazer Qureshi, Neil Kowall, Peter I. Lelkes, Kevin M. McNeill, Elizabeth Krupinski, Krisellen Maloney, Javie Saez Castresana, and Duska Meh.

We are very proud with the Honor Presidency of Prof. Mariano Barbacid, director of the National Center of Oncologic Research, which is covering the main research in Spain on molecular oncology, cancer genetics, molecular pathology, and experimental therapies.

Our scientific committee has done a hard work in the evaluation and selection of presentations. They were coordinated by Dr. Jose Manuel Juiz, with three active teams: our colleagues at the brand new Faculty of Medicine at the Castilla La Mancha University, members of the Research Unit of Hospital of Ciudad Real - many special thanks to Cristobal Martinez, Director of the Unit -, and most importantly, the commissioners of the 20 Scientific Societies, that, as specialists in their respective areas, performed a comprehensive revision of abstracts and manuscripts. A very special work was done by Dr. Jeronimo Gonzalvez (Spanish Society of Pediatric Surgery), Dr. Pablo Fernandez (Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology), Dr. Juan Rovirosa, (Spanish Federation of Health Management), Dr. José Ramón del Prado (Spanish Society of Hospitalary Pharmacy), Dr. Rafael Martinez-Costa (Spanish Society of Implant-Refractive Ocular Surgery), and Dr. Julian Gonzalez (Spanish Society of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery), to mention some.

The International Union Against Cancer (UICC) auspices have been granted for INABIS 2000. This was possible with the efforts of Dr. Silvia de Sanjose, at the Catalonian Oncology Institute.

In the local organization at the department of Pathology of Hospital of Ciudad Real, Dr. Manuel Carbajo, Head of the Department, and Dr. Jesus Gonzalez and Dr. Francisco Martin-Davila have been very active collaborators. We thank our secretaries, Remedios and Angela, for they assistance and their patience.

INABIS 2000 organizing committee wants to thanks especially our Manager Director, Dr. Francisco de Paula Rodriguez, for all the resources available at the INABIS 2000 secretariat, and to our Medical Director, Dr. Elviro Peña, for his trust on INABIS project.

We had two excellent web technicians at the Castilla La Mancha University, Alejo Parra and Evan Valverde, ready to implement new services in the conference, and correct all the programming bugs and malfunctions. Eng. Jose Luis Moraga, Head of the Informatics Department of Castilla La Mancha University made this on-line congress possible with all their resources available.
I must confess, that during congress organization, technology has not always been on our side, and we have learnt a lot this last year about new ways to make easier the publication of scientific works in Internet. We had special interest in investigating web-based solutions that allowed authors to review their presentation at the same time they are submitting it.

Many thanks also to the Spanish Society of Health Informatics (SEIS) for their technical or organizational aid, specially to its president, Eng. Luciano Saez, and the efforts of Dr. Salvador Arribas and the journalist Pablo Otero in the promotion of the congress, and Dr. Fernando Martin for this collaboration in the scientific programme.

INABIS 2000 has a mirror site in South America, thanks to the collaboration of the Bioanthropology Department of the Cauca University, in Colombia (http://www.purace.ucauca.edu.co/antropos/inabis2000)

BioMedNet helped us in the promotion of the conference, as an example of two web-sites brotherhood.

Finally, INABIS on-line conference and proceedings CD-ROM are under the financial sponsoring of Hospital of Ciudad Real, Novasoft Ltd, Fujitsu Ltd, Japan, and Science International.

This year of intense work has resulted this on-line congress that at the organizing committee would like you to enjoy and actively participate in these twelve days, and to be visited frequently, as a site of reference afterwards.