The HealthGrid association was founded to bring the necessary long term continuity between the projects addressing the deployment of Grid technology for healthcare. Over the last five years, a community of researchers working on Grid and High Performance Computing technologies started discussing the barriers and opportunities that Grid technologies must face and exploit for the development of Health-related applications. This interest lead to the first HealthGrid conference, held in Lyon, France on January 16th-17th, 2003, with the focus of creating increased awareness about the possibilities and advantages linked to the deployment of Grid technologies in health, ultimately targeting the creation of a European/International Grid infrastructure for health.

The first HealthGrid conference led to the creation of the HEALTHGRID association, a non-profit research association legally located in France but formed from a wide community of European researchers and institutions sharing expertise in healthgrids. After the second HealthGrid conference, held in Clermont-Ferrand on January 29th-30th, 2004, a “white paper” (http://whitepaper.healthgrid.org) on the current status and prospective of healthgrids was prepared by 40 experts from different areas of Grid technologies, eHealth applications and the medical world. The conclusion of the HealthGrid “White paper” has suggested to build a roadmap based on the development and deployment of healthgrids technology within 10 years (http://roadmap.healthgrid.org).

The HealthGrid association is already identified at a world level as a key actor of the Grid deployment in healthcare and since its inception in 2003 it has been involved in more than 10 projects co-funded by the European Commission as well as by NATO or National grants. A sister organization, the HealthGrid.US Alliance (www.healthgrid.us), has been created in the United States to reinforce its International impact.