International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing, Management, and Embedded Applications in Healthcare (UbiHealth-09): Strategies and Application Case Studies

Description: Ubiquitous computing is enormously empowering health-related activities with the maturation of the Internet and wireless communications, and with the ubiquity of microchips in computers, appliances, and sensors. Embedded software is now very pervasive; and its use in medical devices is of heightened interest since a failure or malfunction may result in the lost of human live(s). There are also important issues related to how to manage healthcare information and devices. The goal and objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from the healthcare, software, and management research and development fields to share their practical and research experiences with ubiquitous computing and management in healthcare. It is anticipated that the workshop will foster collaborative efforts among practitioners and academicians, accelerate knowledge discovery, and reduce the cost of healthcare.

Focus and Perspective Audience: The focus of the workshop will be from two perspectives practitioner and academic. The practitioner perspective will provide the opportunity for practitioners to present case studies and narratives on the deployment, use, and management of embedded software and systems in health-related activities and facilities. Success and failure stories are especially welcomed. The academic perspective will give academicians the opportunity to present and discuss current and future breakthroughs in the design, testing, and deployment of ubiquitous computing techniques for healthcare.

Topics: Case studies and theoretical works related on computing and management in health applications are both emphasized, and the following areas will be given top priority considerations:

1. Developing, testing, and using embedded applications in healthcare service provision

2. Technical infrastructure for health: data coordination and computational thinking

3. Informatics systems for electronic records integrating image data with clinical data for health care decision support

4. Universal interface to transmit image data across institutions/hospitals

5. Interoperable electronic health record (HER)-based research platform

6. Data mining for medical records database, including mining clinical notes, test data and abnormal images

7. Artificial intelligence techniques to support complex decision making in health care or clinical research

8. Protection of individual privacy for aggregate anonymous data, security and privacy policies for health care

9. Technologies to address rural health disparities, geographic disparities in medicare usage and cost

Workshop format: The format of the workshop will include activities in various forms including tutorials, demonstrations, panel discussions, and posters presentations.

The duration of the workshop: one to two full days (depending on number of submissions). Tentatively, individual sessions will range from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, including a 15 minutes break.