This is an exciting time in clinical natural language processing (NLP). Many of the ideas discussed in the NLP community over the last decade have finally come to fruition. Five articles in this issue investigate the interface of humans and applications that integrate NLP or structured knowledge representation.

Since the first concepts for Electronic Health Records (EHR) in the 1990s, the content, structure, and technology of such records were
frequently changed and adapted. The basic idea to support and enhance health care stayed the same over time. The review article in this issue aims at describing the currently available, mainly non-functional, quality requirements with regard to Electronic Health Records.

The selected papers of  the special topic on "Intelligent Clinical Training Systems" highlight issues in the design and construction of systems for training in clinical problem solving and clinical practice and the challenges in the integration of such systems into medical school curricula.