Health informatics applications will be a cornerstone of the next generation healthcare delivery system. These applications will support the delivery of safe, patient-centered care, and collaborative care delivery. The complexity of modern healthcare is delivered by many different specialties, to many different patients with complex diseases and comorbidity. A one size fits all approach is not adequate to reach the triple aim of improving the patient experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing the per capita cost of healthcare. Health informatics applications must rather be built to be adaptable and sensitive to the complex contexts where they will be used. The health informatics community has long been interested in the role that context plays in the design, implementation and evaluation of Health IT. We have come to realize that context is not just a passive characteristic that impacts Health IT usage but rather is embedded in the core of the users, processes and outcomes that Health IT interacts with. Therefore, we need better approaches to study and understand its impact on Health IT usage in different healthcare settings. This book contains the conference papers from CSHI 2017 - Delivering 21st Century Healthcare - Building a Quality-and-Efficiency Driven System. It contains papers on a variety of topics that are divided into four sections: Theoretical approaches to investigate context sensitive health informatics to generate robust evidence, Redesigning healthcare work practices, Patient participation in healthcare design and redesign, and Human factors and usability. The 2017 CSHI conference continues our efforts to develop robust scientific evidence on context and Health IT.

The digital transformation of healthcare delivery remains a work in progress, and contextual variation continues to be one of the barriers to the development of sustainable health information technology. Context-sensitive health informatics concerns health information technologies and their environments, which may be people such as patients, users, designers and evaluators, but also non-human constructs such as organizations, work practices, guidelines and protocols, or buildings and markets. This book presents papers from CSHI 2019, the international conference on Context Sensitive Health Informatics, held in Lille, France, on 23 and 24 August 2019. The subtitle of the conference was Sustainability in Dynamic Ecosystems, and the thirty papers included here are divided into six sections: understanding organizational contexts; towards sustainable EHR; different contexts for medication errors and patient safety; methods and models to study contexts for health information systems; citizens in health contexts; and designing and evaluating in contexts. Two keynote speeches from the conference are also included. With its focus on context sensitivity and sustainability in digital healthcare, the book will be of interest to all those working in the field of health informatics.

Context is key in the design, implementation and evaluation of health information technology. Healthcare systems around the world are in transition; adopting technologies to deal with the problems of aging populations, increased numbers of chronically ill patients and limited resources. But a 'one size fits all' approach is not the answer, and may limit those local healthcare system innovations that are so crucial to the development of health informatics. Even the most advanced systems will fail to achieve the desired outcomes if context is not taken into account. This book presents the proceedings of the Context Sensitive Health Informatics (CSHI) conference, held in Curitiba, Brazil, in August 2015. Context sensitive health informatics is about health information technologies and their environments, and the 26 papers included here examine how health informatics systems are developed, implemented and evaluated in a complex environment of many places, many users, many uses and in many contexts. The book is divided into four themes: different users in different contexts; evaluating for context through usability testing and ensuring patient safety; organizational and social issues in different places; and understanding different contexts using theory. This overview of the research and experience critical to ensuring the successful introduction and adaptation of healthcare systems to new countries, contexts and healthcare settings will be of interest to all those involved in improving the quality of healthcare worldwide.

Digital developments have resulted in many changes in the way healthcare is conceived and delivered. This has brought challenges, but has also created opportunities to shape healthcare, and has made the management and evaluation of systems and innovations, together with the education of healthcare practitioners, essential at all levels. This book presents the proceedings of HIC 2019, the annual Australian national conference for Health Informatics, held in Melbourne, Australia, from 12 – 14 August 2019. The conference provides the ideal environment for clinicians, researchers, health IT professionals, industry and consumers to gather and share their knowledge, to drive innovative thinking, enhance services, improve data-driven decision making, and allow greater consumer involvement. The conference focused on ten themes that underpin a fully digital healthcare sector: analytics and the learning health system; clinical informatics; digital health workforce development; health policy, ethics and business models; informatics in health professional education; innovations, informaticians and digital health entrepreneurship; integrated and connected care; interoperability and informatics infrastructure; participatory medicine and consumer informatics; and system implementations and digital hospitals. The 29 papers selected for inclusion here reflect these themes, highlighting the research and technological innovations that are supporting the digital transformation of the healthcare sector. The book includes examples of important new developments in the field of health informatics, and emphasizes the central role that digital health plays in current and future healthcare organizations everywhere. It will be of interest to all those involved in the field of healthcare.

Medical informatics is a field which continues to evolve with developments and improvements in foundational methods, applications, and technology, constantly offering opportunities for supporting the customization of healthcare to individual patients. This book presents the proceedings of the 16th World Congress of Medical and Health Informatics (MedInfo2017), held in Hangzhou, China, in August 2017, which also marked the 50th anniversary of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). The central theme of MedInfo2017 was "Precision Healthcare through Informatics", and the scientific program was divided into five tracks: connected and digital health; human data science; human, organizational, and social aspects; knowledge management and quality; and safety and patient outcomes. The 249 accepted papers and 168 posters included here span the breadth and depth of sub-disciplines in biomedical and health informatics, such as clinical informatics; nursing informatics; consumer health informatics; public health informatics; human factors in healthcare; bioinformatics; translational informatics; quality and safety; research at the intersection of biomedical and health informatics; and precision medicine. The book will be of interest to all those who wish to keep pace with advances in the science, education, and practice of biomedical and health informatics worldwide.

Biomedical engineering and health informatics are closely related to each other, and it is often difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, but ICT systems in healthcare and biomedical systems and devices are already becoming increasingly interconnected, and share the common entity of data. This is something which is set to become even more prevalent in future, and will complete the chain and flow of information from the sensor, via processing, to the actuator, which may be anyone or anything from a human healthcare professional to a robot. Methods for automating the processing of information, such as signal processing, machine learning, predictive analytics and decision support, are increasingly important for providing actionable information and supporting personalized and preventive healthcare protocols in both biomedical and digital healthcare systems and applications. This book of proceedings presents 50 papers from the 12th eHealth conference, eHealth2018, held in Vienna, Austria, in May 2018. The theme of this year’s conference is Biomedical Meets eHealth – From Sensors to Decisions, and the papers included here cover a wide range of topics from the field of eHealth. The book will be of interest to all those working to design and implement healthcare today.

We live in an age characterized by computerized information, but ubiquitous information technology has profoundly changed our healthcare systems and, if not adequately trained to deal with it, healthcare professionals can all too easily be overwhelmed by the complexity and magnitude of the data. This demands new skills from physicians as well as novel ways to provide medical knowledge. Selecting and assessing relevant information presents a challenge which can only be met by bridging the various disciplines in healthcare and the data sciences. This book presents the proceedings of the 62nd annual meeting of the German Association of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (German Medical Data Sciences – GMDS 2017): Visions and Bridges, held in Oldenburg, Germany, in September 2017. The 242 submissions to the conference included 77 full papers, of which 42 were accepted for publication here after rigorous review. These are divided into 7 sections: teaching and training; epidemiological surveillance, screening and registration; research methods; IT infrastructure for biomedical research/data integration centers; healthcare information systems; interoperability – standards, terminologies, classification; and biomedical informatics, innovative algorithms and signal processing. The book provides a vision for healthcare in the information age, and will be of interest to all those concerned with improving clinical decision making and the effectiveness and efficiency of health systems using data methods and technology.

The domain of eHealth faces ongoing challenges to deliver 21st century healthcare. Digitalization, capacity building and user engagement with truly interdisciplinary and cross-domain collaboration are just a few of the areas which must be addressed. This book presents 190 full papers from the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE 2018) conference, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, in April 2018. The MIE conferences aim to enable close interaction and networking between an international audience of academics, health professionals, patients and industry partners. The title of this year’s conference is: Building Continents of Knowledge in Oceans of Data – The Future of Co-Created eHealth, and contributions cover a broad range of topics related to the digitalization of healthcare, citizen participation, data science, and changing health systems, addressed from the perspectives of citizens, patients and their families, healthcare professionals, service providers, developers and policy makers. The second part of the title in particular has attracted a large number of papers describing strategies to create, evaluate, adjust or deliver tools and services for improvements in healthcare organizations or to enable citizens to respond to the challenges of dealing with health systems. Papers are grouped under the headings: standards and interoperability, implementation and evaluation, knowledge management, decision support, modeling and analytics, health informatics education and learning systems, and patient-centered services. Attention is also given to development for sustainable use, educational strategies and workforce development, and the book will be of interest to both developers and practitioners of healthcare services.

The lives of people with disabilities are complex and various, and there are many situations where technology – particularly assistive technology – already makes a real difference. It is clear that smart phone and tablet computer based solutions continue to enhance the independence of many users, but it is also important that more traditional assistive technologies and services are not forgotten or neglected. This book presents the proceedings of the 14th conference of the Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe (AAATE 2017) entitled: ‘Harnessing the power of technology to improve lives’, held in Sheffield, UK, in September 2017. This 4-day event about assistive technologies (AT) highlights the association’s interest in innovating not only technology, but also services, and addresses the global challenge of meeting the needs of the increasing number of people who could benefit from assistive technology. The 200+ papers in the book are grouped under 30 subject headings, and include contributions on a wide range of topical subjects, including aging well and dementia; care robotics; eHealth and apps; innovations; universal design; sport; and disordered speech. The breadth of the AAATE conference reflects people’s life needs and so the book is sure to contain something of interest to all those whose work involves the design, development and use of assistive technology, whatever the situation. The photo on the front cover illustrates the breadth of assistive technologies that can improve lives. Photographer: Simon Butler.

The population of the world is ageing, and the prospect of increasing care costs is generating new ideas and approaches to healthcare for the elderly. This growing burden of care, coupled with the rapid increase of digital literacy and an appetite for the use of digital resources among older citizens, has also encouraged a diversification of remote healthcare options, and has prompted the care sector to diversify its offer and investigate strategic alignments in research and development. This book presents a selection of papers from the 5th Global Telehealth conference, held in Adelaide, Australia, in November 2017. In recognition of the diversity of this area of healthcare, this series of international meetings, which began in 2010, has focused on different topics in telehealth. The main aim of the 2017 meeting was to share knowledge of complementary research endeavors in telehealth as related to later-life care, and to foster interaction between the different groups undertaking research in this emerging topic area. The 11 papers included here cover a diverse variety of topics, including: telehealth in the elderly with chronic heart failure; wearable information technology and self-management; telerehabilitation exercise in residential care; the Smarter Safer Homes platform; and prediction of freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The book will be of interest to all whose work involves the development or delivery of healthcare for older patients.