It is my great pleasure to announce the official cooperation between ‘Eyes, JAPAN’ and the department of electronic media at the University of Wuppertal in projects of medical information republishing. The department of electronic media is especially researching topics of media-independent processing and structuring of content and further more the analysis of structure and syntax of given media-specific visual content with focus on non-textual elements (e.g. images or movies). This research has especially been done in the context of publishing. As publishing is undergoing changes more and more off paper as output medium towards electronic publishing in networked environments, the same changes occur to information treatment in health care. So we hope the cooperation aids the transfer of knowledge made in classic and modern publishing to information processing in health care.

Besides the formal cooperation, for me, this is one further step in keeping ties between my home and Aizu in general and to ‘Eyes, JAPAN’ specifically. But still this cooperation is special to me. What started with a short trip to Japan including a two weeks internship at ‘Eyes, JAPAN’ three years ago has grown up now to a bond between an university in my home town in Germany and a company here in Aizu-Wakamatsu. I am really looking forward to what this newly step might lead to in the future.