The role of the International Council on Medical and Care Compunetics (ICMCC) with regards to patient-related ICT has become obvious with the start of the Record Access Portal. This work aims to come forward with a recommendation to the WHO on Record Access.

Medical and Care Compunetics 5 accompanies the fifth annual ICMCC Event, which is one of the leading information platforms for medical and care ICT. The focal point of this publication lies on compunetics, the social, societal and ethical aspects of medical and care ICT. This book contains a variety of debatable subjects. Among national and regional projects, issues discussed are aspects of electronic health records and European projects. There is also a discussion of knowledge management, which is lead by Arthur Krukowski and Andy Marsh; other issues that are considered are behavioral compunetics, empowerment and there is also a discussion of personal health paradigm challenging citizens and patients lead by Prof. Dr. Bernd Blobel from the eHealth Competence Center jointly with the European Federation for Medical Informatics, Working Groups `Electronic Health Records' and `Security, Safety and Ethics'.

The International Council on Medical and Care Compunetics (ICMCC) wants to emphasize the computing and networking synergies in medicine and (health)care. The term compunetics was introduced to present the union of computing and (social) networking. ICMCC wants to bring together as many aspects of medical and care compunetics as possible by forming a Global Knowledge Center. The availability of information works on both the BTB and the BTC level, as the structure will aim at both the consumers and the professionals (caregivers). Patients / consumers will be able to obtain information related to their illness or handicaps, so that they will be more knowledgeable about possible treatments and treatment alternatives. Professionals will be able to find relevant information (medical, technical, scientific) in a fast and efficient way. Industry (and more specifically SME’s) will have access to technical information from a central portal. The shifting paradigm of health from reparative to preventive will enhance the necessity of consumer related information that, when efficiently obtained, can be of great economical benefit. In a world where the need for care is growing rapidly and where it is impossible to expect a growth in the number of caregivers, information is becoming more and more crucial. Not only because an informed patient is an economic benefit, but also because awareness amongst professionals about developments in their own and related fields can save enormous amounts of money. ICMCC will build a global network of professionals in medicine and care. Clinicians, pharmacologists, managers, care practitioners, patients, policy makers, IT specialists will all be represented.

For citizen/patient-related information, it is necessary to use the latest medical and care compunetics. This publication covers aspects concerning information supply to patient and professional; electronic health records, its standards, its social implications; and developments in medical and care compunetics.

The papers presented are refereed and from all over the world. They reflect the breadth and depth of the field of biomedical and health informatics, covering topics such as; health information systems, knowledge and data management, education, standards, consumer health and human factors, emerging technologies, sustainability, organizational and economic issues, genomics, and image and signal processing. As this volume carries such a wide collection, it will be of great interest to anyone engaged in biomedical and health informatics research and application.

Pervasive healthcare is an emerging research discipline, focusing on the development and application of pervasive and ubiquitous computing technology for healthcare and wellness. Pervasive healthcare seeks to respond to a variety of pressures on healthcare systems, including the increased incidence of life-style related and chronic diseases, emerging consumerism in healthcare, need for empowering patients and relatives for self-care and management of their health, and need to provide seamless access for healthcare services, independent of time and place. Pervasive healthcare may be defined from two perspectives. First, it is the development and application of pervasive computing (or ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence) technologies for healthcare, health and wellness management. Second, it seeks to make healthcare available to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and quality of healthcare. This book proposes to define the emerging area of pervasive health and introduce key management principles, most especially knowledge management, its tools, techniques and technologies. In addition, the book takes a socio-technical, patient-centric approach which serves to emphasize the importance of a key triumvirate in healthcare management namely, the focus on people, process and technology. Last but not least the book discusses in detail a specific example of pervasive health, namely the potential use of a wireless technology solution in the monitoring of diabetic patients.

Swamy Laxminarayan was an outstanding researcher active in many diverse fields of science and technology. He was one of the most prominent biomedical scientists and his ideas influenced the Biomedical Technology substantially. This book tries to provide an overview on the multiple achievements of Swamy Laxminarayan. It presents a collection of his most outstanding publications and an overview on his outstanding life. This Volume is the second part of the liber amicorum in Memory of Swamy Laxminarayan.

Current demographic, economic and social conditions which developed countries are faced with require a paradigm change for delivering high quality and efficient health services. In that context, healthcare systems have to turn from organization-centered to process-oriented and finally towards individualized patient care, also called personal care, based on ehealth platform services. Interoperability requirements for ubiquitous personalized health services reach beyond current concepts of health information integration among professional stakeholders and related Electronic Patient Records. Future personal health platforms particularly have to maintain semantic interoperability among systems using different modalities and technologies, different knowledge representation and domain experts’ languages as well as different coding schemes and terminologies to include home care, as well as personal and mobile systems. This development is not restricted to regions or countries, but appears globally, requiring a comprehensive international collaboration. This publication within the series Studies in Health Technology and Informatics presents papers from leading international experts representing all domains involved in ehealth.

Adaptation and personalization have been extensively studied in CSCL research community aiming to design intelligent systems that adaptively support eLearning processes and collaboration. Yet, with the fast development in Internet technologies, especially with the emergence of new data technologies and the mobile technologies, new opportunities and perspectives are opened for advanced adaptive and personalized systems. Adaptation and personalization are posing new research and development challenges to nowadays CSCL systems. In particular, adaptation should be focused in a multi-dimensional way (cognitive, technological, context-aware and personal). Moreover, it should address the particularities of both individual learners and group collaboration. As a consequence, the aim of this book is twofold. On the one hand, it discusses the latest advances and findings in the area of intelligent adaptive and personalized learning systems. On the other hand it analyzes the new implementation perspectives for intelligent adaptive learning and collaborative systems that are brought by the advances in scripting languages, IMS LD, educational modeling languages and learning activity management systems. Given the variety of learning needs as well as the existence of different technological solutions, the book exemplifies the methodologies and best practices through several case studies and adaptive real-world collaborative learning scenarios, which show the advancement in the field of analysis, design and implementation of intelligent adaptive and personalized systems.