Bioinformatics and medical informatics are both rapidly advancing fields. Advances in molecular biology, the home of bioinformatics, demand that it reach out to the biology of cells, tissues, organs, organisms and populations. Within medicine, increasing understanding of the molecular basis of disease, and the effect of genotype on disease propensity and treatment efficacy, create a convergence between the disciplines. This project is an information gathering and dissemination activity which will stimulate these developments and exploit the synergy between bio- and medical informatics. A collaboration between national and international policy-making organisations will document the state-of-the-art in biomedical informatics and identify areas of maximum opportunity. This will be done by systematically identifying European experts (using the so-called "snowball" methodology) and collecting their insights. Initially this will be done through an open-ended consultation whose output will be used to create an internet survey from which results will be summarised and presented. Simultaneously, bibliometric and data-mining methods will identify and analyse the content of the relevant scientific literature. Areas of opportunity will be extracted from the resulting information, and meetings of the partners and experts will carefully prioritise these. A report summarising the findings will provide well-judged input to future European scientific and funding policy. A concluding meeting will present these findings for discussion by a wider community of bio- and medical informaticians.