Dear Colleagues,

The International Society for Holter and Noninvasive Electrocardiography (ISHNE), pioneer in distance cardiology education through the Internet, is proud to present this new conference.

We start today the worldwide conference on heart failure, just as we have been doing it over the last four years, with the same strength, joy and expectations as in the prior events.

The excellent response from the previous editions and the great number of registrants, which by now is well over 10,000, encourages us to continue working on these presentations in which you, with your comments, questions and concerns, constitute the very essence.

This time we have Dr. Arthur J. Moss as the Honorary Chair. He is from Rochester, NY, USA, and is a world renowned investigator of arrhythmias and sudden death. There are 45 lecturers, which will provide an updated approach to incidence, evaluation and treatment of Heart Failure. These publications will be available on our site starting tomorrow and will continue through the first 10 days of April. During this time the Forum will be open for the questions, answers, comments and discussions from all participants.

Among the innovations, we want to highlight the following:

1. For the first time, we have included the translation into Chinese and Russian, in addition to our usual policy of translation into Portuguese and Spanish. This presents a great challenge and work for the whole team, but we think this is the best way to reach several distant areas of the planet in their native languages.
2. CME credits (Continuous Medical Education) will be provided by the ACCME of the USA, to anyone who requires such credits and has answered correctly the questions we will publish about each presentation in due time. This is the first time we have received this type of accreditation for an Internet activity, thus it demonstrates a very important commitment.
3. In addition to the presentations, we will have clinical cases, bibliography and treatment guidelines so that you may have all the necessary elements to evaluate this subject.
4. Dr. Moss has written 10 questions about Heart Failure that Dr. Anthony DeMaria has gladly answered. These same questions were posed by our experts to the most distinguished colleagues from China, India, Russia, Argentina and Brazil in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of this disease. Surely these questions will also be present in the subsequent discussion.

In this way, we feel we may offer a different, interactive conference with a very high scientific level, in which participation by each one of you is the special spice to make it more interesting.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us in this project, and special thanks to Dr. Moss for his dedication and enthusiasm, to the guests for their presentations and comments, to the Board of Trustees of the ISHNE for their ongoing help and St. Jude Medical, who with their support made this event possible. To everyone, thank you very much. We are pleased to begin this conference.

Dr. Wojciech Zareba
Dr. Sergio Dubner
Dr. Edgardo Schapachnik
Dr. Andrés Pérez Riera
Dr. Li Zhang