This Research Topic is a follow on from the Topic Editors' successful volume I. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the ability to perform automated/case-based reasoning, constraint processing, deep learning, and deep reinforcement learning. Recent advancements in AI techniques and GPU (graphics processing unit) computing capabilities have made it possible to process large volumes of data and extract valuable insights within a short period. Digital public health data are enormous, and harnessing AI's power can lead to exciting and ground-breaking research. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, AI can assist in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease modeling, non-contact temperature screening, intelligent contact tracking, detecting social/economic factors on transmission, effective health communication and misinformation detection, identifying factors that affect the mental and emotional health of the public.

Along with advances in prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care of diseases, major health problems of the 21st century need to incorporate the point of view of those affected. Exploring, describing, and understanding the experiences of patients and populations is key to implementing health programs. Advancing public health involves training and involving and empowering vulnerable communities and populations.

In recent years, there has been steady increase in the interest shown in both big data analytics and the use of information technology (IT) solutions to improve healthcare services. Despite the growing interest, there are limited materials, to addressing the needs and challenges posed by the activities and processes including the use of big data. From IT solutions’ perspectives, this book aims to advance the deployment and use of big data analytics to increase patients’ big data usefulness and improve healthcare service delivery. The book provides significant insights and useful guide on how to access and manage big data, in improving healthcare service delivery. The book contributes a fresh perspective, which primarily comes from the complementary use of analytics approach with actor-network theory (ANT), and other techniques, in advancing healthcare service delivery. Accessing and managing healthcare big data have always been a challenging exercise. Due to the sensitivity of the health sector, the focus on patients’ big data is from either technical or social perspective. Thus, the book employs sociotechnical theories, ANT and structuration theory (ST) as lenses to examine and explain the factors that enable and constrain the use of patients’ big data for health services. By doing so, the book brings a different dimension and advance health service delivery. Providing a timely and important contribution to this critical area, this book is a valuable, international resource for academics, postgraduate students and researchers in the areas of IT, big data analytics, data management and health informatics.

Data science is an inter-disciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from many structural and unstructured data. Data science is related to data mining, deep learning and big data. Data analytics software is a more focused version of this and can even be considered part of the larger process. Analytics is devoted to realizing actionable insights that can be applied immediately based on existing queries. For the purposes of this volume, data science is an umbrella term that encompasses data analytics, data mining, machine learning, and several other related disciplines. While a data scientist is expected to forecast the future based on past patterns, data analysts extract meaningful insights from various data sources. Although data mining and other related areas have been around for a few decades, data science and analytics are still quickly evolving, and the processes and technologies change, almost on a day-to-day basis. This volume provides an overview of some of the most important advances in these areas today, including practical coverage of the daily applications. Valuable as a learning tool for beginners in this area as well as a daily reference for engineers and scientists working in these areas, this is a must-have for any library.