As one of the co-editors of the Springer Nature Textbook "Personal Health Informatics: Patient Participation in Precision Health," I was thrilled and honestly also in a bit of disbelief to find out the book was finally released. Although it took us over two years to get to this point, it is available now, before the holidays, on Springer and Amazon, so there really shouldn't be any complaints, especially after seeing what the world has been through over the last few years. I simply feel lucky that I still have my personal health at this point (knock on wood!), not to mention holding a beautifully printed book about it with my name on the cover.

The idea of creating a healthcare book from a non-provider's perspective came naturally from the three of us—Sabrina Hsueh, Thomas Wetter, and myself. There have been too many books and publications about how to provide and improve care from the perspective of clinicians or medical centers. In many other industries, the person who receives services would be the center of attention and interest. In the healthcare industry, however, we seem to operate the other way around—the voice, need, preference or choice from patients are often neglected, subordinated, or completely ignored. We know that, on the one hand, this has been a challenge complicated by multifaceted issues, but on the other hand, it is about time to share the view of patients and its relevance to precision health in today’s fast-paced society filled with highly complex and ever-evolving technologies.

Just as Professor Enrico Coiera said in his Forward to the book “the challenges we face as engaged patients however are formidable. If it is truly not possible for a clinician to be up to date with medical science because the pace of innovation is so frenetic, what chance is there for a patient?” The book offers a snapshot of this emerging field of personal health informatics, supported by the methodological, practical, and ethical perspectives from researchers and scientists in the field. In addition to being a research reader, this book will also provide pragmatic insights for practitioners in designing, implementing, and evaluating personal health informatics in healthcare settings.

According to Dr. Ted Shortliffe, a world-renowned pioneer in health informatics, the new term “Personal Health Informatics” is coined to cover a broader definition of consumer health. Individuals are not just the consumers of health services anymore; they are active participants, researchers, and designers in the healthcare ecosystem. Instead of designing health services “for” patients, we are entering a new era wherein health services are designed “with” patients. The rise of personal health informatics is also in line with the accumulation of “real-world data” that power up the generation of “real-world evidence” and a wide range of AI applications down the stream. Springer Nature publishes this volume in its Cognitive Informatics book series. Dr. Shortliffe also indicated that the volume would be an excellent reader for students in all clinical disciplines as well as in biomedical and health informatics to learn lessons from the common challenges and obstacles revealed in the case studies of this emerging field.

“New ways of interacting, new ways of behaving, and new tools for thinking are all part of the solution. The chapters in this book also make clear how early we are in our journey to truly embrace what is to come. The healthcare systems of different countries are all unique, but in one way are all the same - they are monolithic in behavior and slow to change. It is often said that revolution cannot come from within the old large organizational structures. Revolution comes from the boundaries of the old hegemony and the wild borderlands. So maybe read these chapters not as stories from the old healthcare empire, but as reports from the wild border country of patient-led change,” said Professor Coiera.

23 chapters, 580 pages, numerous international authors and reviewers, throughout the global pandemic—what an incredible journey to complete the book! But our real journey in engaging patients as equal partners has just begun…