Presentation by Mary Jo Deering

You are, in a sense, the beneficiaries of last year's experience
when we planned a very robust opening session and learned that
hypoglycemia sets in very early when you've just arrived from the
easy coast  Therefore, tonight's program and tonight's words will be
short and informal.

I certainly want to thank Mark and the Annenberg Center for
welcoming us this second year.  He alluded to the heat and I do
think of it and a "bait and switch" situation.  Last year we had
what we thought was wonderful weather and we didn't realize how
unusual it was.  That's why we came back -- not really, we would
have come anyway, as they have superb facilities, a wonderful staff,
and they help us project this conference far further than we would
be able to do otherwise.

We certainly want to express our deep appreciation to the Robert
Wood Johnson Assocation who gave us the ability to use the
satellites, the Internet, and to many other print publications.
When I asked them why they were doing this, what they want out of
it, they made an interesting comment that I want to share with you
because I think it's very important.  "Well, you know, this is like
basic research -- you don't say exactly what you what to come out of
it, the ingredients just come together and downstream you see then
what you get out of it."  And I think that's a good metaphor for
what we're doing tonight.

I'm going to skip over the thanks to the Health and Human Services
team for now and mention, however, that the IEEE-USA has been a
conference supporter from very early on.  We owe Mike MacDonald a
round of thanks for that.  He certainly is at the center of what
happens in this field.  Those that know him know that he wears two
hats if not more.  He is also representing the Koop Foundation, and
everyone in the field owes a salute to Dr. Koop for bringing such
energy and credibility and experience to the field of consumer
health information.  I saw my first Koop advertisement on TV and he
comes across very well.

To IBI business publishing:  This is a new partnership for us and
you've gotten a glimpse of how dynamic and creative their work is
and we're certainly glad they lent their skills to the conference.

Pharmacy and Upjohn also have also been supporting the conference's
development.

Mike made a reference to Mother's Day, and last year Michael
McGinnis embarrassed me by calling me the "mother of the conference"
-- I'm not that old! -- but there's something in that parenting
metaphor that's apt.  There's a pleasure in seeing something grow
and take on a life of its own.  Certainly this conference owes
everything to the people that have organized it. The names of the
conference organizers are listed on the back of your program, and
tomorrow they will all be asked to stand and be recognized.

I saw somewhere a statement that seemed equally apropos of this
conference.  "The goal is to convert the vision of the visionaries
into the reality of the realist."  But then I thought, no, that's a
binary system that's really too simplistic for what we're doing
here.  I know we have a number of visionaries in the audience and
probably a number of realists.  And probably an equal number that
consider themselves with a leg in both camps.  I hope our goal is to
not see a dichotomy between the two, or to believe that the vision
will never become the reality or that only the hard reality is all
we are after.  I think that the talent that is assembled here is
such that we'll have to work together to see if we can create, in
the words of Robert Wood Johnson, some basic chemistry here.

Back to the role of parenting, one of the fathers of the field of
consumer health information is Tom Ferguson.  He is currently a
Senior Associate, Center for Clinical Computing, Harvard Medical
School, and the President of Self-Care Productions Incorporated.  I
know many of you know him and have attended his conferences and
benefited from his contributions to the field of self-help.  His
recent book Health Online is a most comprehensive guide to self-
care resources on-line.  He also founded the influential journal
Medical Self Care and he wrote a chapter on the empowered health
consumer to accompany the book published on Bill Moyers Mind-Body
Medicine.   It's very appropriate also, as an indication of his
contributions to the field, that John Nesbitt has referred to him as
"the essence of the shift from institutional help to self help."