Thisyear, the5thInternationalSymposiumonMedicalDataAnalysishasexperimented an apparently slight modi?cation. The word biological has been added to the title of the conferences. The motivation for this shift goes beyond the wish to attract a diff- ent kind of professional. It is linked to recent trends to produce a shift within various biomedical areas towards genomics-based research and practice. For instance, medical informaticsandbioinformaticsarebeinglinkedina synergicareadenominatedbiom- ical informatics.Similarly, patient careis beingimproved, leadingto conceptsandareas such as molecular medicine, genomic medicine or personalized healthcare. The resultsfromdifferentgenomeprojects, the advancesin systemsbiologyand the integrative approaches to physiology would not be possible without new approaches in data and information processing. Within this scenario, novel methodologies and tools will beneededtolinkclinicalandgenomicinformation, forinstance, forgeneticclinical trials, integrated data mining of genetic clinical records and clinical databases, or gene expression studies, among others. Genomic medicine presents a series of challenges that need to be addressed by researchers and practitioners. In this sense, this ISBMDA conference aimed to become a place where researchers involved in biomedical research could meet and discuss. For this conference, the classical contents of former ISMDA conferences were updated to incorporate various issues from the biological ?elds. Similarly to the incorporation of these new topics of the conference, data analysts will face, in this world of genomic medicine and related areas, signi?cant challenges in research, education and practice."

The sequencing of the genomes of humans and other organisms is inspiring the developmentofnew statisticalandbioinformatics tools that we hope canmodify the current understanding of human diseases and therapies. As our knowledge about the human genome increases so does our belief that to fully grasp the mechanisms of diseases we need to understand their genetic basis and the p- teomicsbehind them and to integratethe knowledgegeneratedin thelaboratory in clinical settings. The new genetic and proteomic data has brought forth the possibility of developing new targets and therapies based on these ?ndings, of implementing newly developed preventive measures, and also of discovering new research approaches to old problems. To fully enhance our understanding of disease processes, to develop more and better therapies to combat and cure diseases, and to develop strategies to prevent them, there is a need for synergy of the disciplines involved, medicine, molecular biology, biochemistry and computer science, leading to more recent ?elds such as bioinformatics and biomedical informatics. The 6th International Symposium on Biological and Medical Data Analysis aimed to become a place where researchersinvolved in these diversebut incre- ingly complementary areas could meet to present and discuss their scienti?c results. The papers in this volume discuss issues from statistical models to arc- tectures and applications to bioinformatics and biomedicine. They cover both practical experience and novel research ideas and concepts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Medical Data Analysis, ISMDD 2001, held in Madrid, Spain, in October 2001.The 43 revised papers presented together with three invited keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. Among the issues addressed are data analysis and diagnosis, classification, clustering, medical image analysis, Bayesian networks, decision support systems, fuzzy modeling, time series analysis, collaborative filtering, pattern recognition, case-based reasoning, rule-based inference, and computer vision.