Brief history

The Institute of Biomedical Informatics (IBMI) was founded by the Faculty of Medicine in 1973 as a response to the needs for providing and co-ordinating data-analysis and information-service facilities. In 1975, the staff was established, and in 1976 permanent premises were assigned to the Institute and the first computers were aquired. At the same time, the mission of the Institute was set, and even though the development plans have been adapting to the technological progress ever since, the fundamental scope remains unchainged: our primary aim is to provide and analyse information relevant for scientific research. The Institute's activities are thus focused on the technical work, but every since 1976 we have also been been involved in teaching, first at the undergraduate level and lately also at the graduate level. Since 1977, the core of the technical work has been our bibliographic database Biomedicina Slovenica. From the early nineties onwards, we have also been in charge of the telecommunication and computer network of the Faculty of Medicine.

In the late eighties, the Institute launched its own research, today spanning over five projects, two of which are international. During the almost three decades of the Institute's existence, we have hosted numerous internationally renowned experts from the fields of library and information science, computing and statistics as visitors and lecturers. We have established particularly close contacts with the Institute of Computer Sciences in Medicine in Vienna (Austria), the Medical Informatics Unit of the INSERM in Paris (France) and the Biostatistics Department of the University of Virginia (USA).