Since 1992, the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Conference series has gathered physicians, computer scientists, and IT innovators to promote informatics technologies for use in healthcare. Its unique and multidisciplinary assemblage of expertise encourages novel interactions and development of innovative tools for use in the medical environment. The January 2001 conference presents forefront research on tools for telemedicine, computer-assisted diagnosis and surgery, psychotherapy, and education. The proceedings describes applications used in clinical care, and also these applications' underlying technologies: simulation, visualization, imaging, haptics, and robotics.