Medical informatics: quo vadis?

In this contribution some comments are given regarding an article of Haux et al., which is published in the same issue. After discussing some general aspects of the paper, the comments focus on patient-centred care and genomics. Trends that are observed today are used to predict the situation with respect of the use of ICT in healthcare in the year 2013. It is postulated that a shared electronic patient record in which both healthcare provider and patient enter and retrieve data will be available. The role of the patient in the management of her disease will be much larger than it is now. The impact of new knowledge coming from the field of genomics will be large. It is not possible to predict the impact on functionality and the use of healthcare information systems in 2013.