Call for Papers - Special Issue of Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research on eHealth and Services Computing in Healthcare

Guest Editors:

Carolyn McGregor (University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada)

Anthony Maeder, (University of Western Sydney, Australia)

Healthcare is often perceived to lag behind other industry sectors in its uptake and adoption of new technology. eHealth is one such technology which includes the areas of health informatics, electronic medical/patient records, clinical decision support, telehealth. The main purpose of eHealth is to provide better use of information in health care settings, to improve the quality of patient care and the efficiency of clinical processes. Many situations exist where the use of eCommerce principles would be appropriate to establish new eHealth solutions, and these warrant extensive research investigation. Services Computing has b een described as a cross-discipline that covers the science and technology of bridging the gap between Business Services and IT Services (IEEE Services Computing Community). This role is supported by Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA), business consulting methodology and utilities, business process modelling, transformation and integration. The goal of Services Computing is to enable IT services and computing technology to perform business services more efficiently and effectively. Opportunities abound for the unique aspects of healthcare to drive fundamental computing and IT research together with leading applied research within the healthcare domain, that could potentially be reapplied to areas outside of healthcare.

This special issue invites papers with research contributions in the domain of eHealth and Services Computing in Healthcare. The topics include but are not limited to:

• * Trends and Challenges for eHealth and/ or Services Computing in Healthcare
• * Case Studies in eHealth and/or Services Computing in Healthcare
• * Impact and benefits of eHealth and Services Computing in Healthcare
• * Services Computing for intra and inter organization patient journeys
• * Drivers and Barriers for adoption of Service Oriented Architectures in Healthcare
• * Usage of mobile devices and patient surveillance systems for Healthcare Services
• * Patient journey modeling in eHealth and/or Services Computing in Healthcare
• * Quality of Service and Quality Assurance for eHealth and/or Services Computing in Healthcare
• * Development and deployment of Service Oriented Architectures supporting Healthcare
• * Legal and Regulatory requirements concerning electronic delivery of Healthcare Services
• * New models of healthcare delivery supported by eHealth and/or Services Computing
• * Healthcare Services performance issues (e.g. Availability, Reliabil ity and Security)
• * Management and monitoring of eHealth and/or Services Computing in Healthcare
• * Assessment, evaluation and evidence validation issues for Healthcare Information Systems
• * Design, usability, ethics and other human factor issues for Healthcare Information Systems
• * eHealth DBMS implementation issues including security, portability and mobility

Submission:

Authors are invited to submit original and significant research contributions in the aforementioned areas. Papers should not be previously published, or currently submitted for consideration elsewhere. Manuscripts must conform to the journal format (see http://www.jtaer.com/). All submissions will be reviewed according to the journal peer-review policy. Accepted papers will be published in the special issue on eHealth and Services Computing in Healthcare of the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (to appear in August 2009). Pleas e submit title and abstract as well as full papers under consideration of the deadlines given below to: c.mcgregor@ieee.org

Important Dates:

Abstract submission:    January 15, 2009

Full paper submission:    February 15, 2009

Author notification:     April 15, 2009

Camera ready version:    June 7, 2009

Nottingham City Council has announced the launch of an innovative service that uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to identify clothing belonging to individual residents, enhancing care provision for people with dementia, maintaining their identity and independence and promoting dignity in care.

The service is the first of its kind to be launched in the UK. RFID buttons from leading telecare specialist Tunstall are being introduced to all 142 residents across five specialist dementia units across Nottingham, which includes residents who visit for short-term care.

Seeing another resident in their clothing can cause confusion and distress to people with dementia and their families. RFID technology will be used to securely store data relating to individual residents, to ensure all clothing can be identified and returned correctly.

The technology will enable health and social care professionals to address the risk of infections such as MRSA and other skin-related issues and allergies, which is a concern for staff when washing residents’ clothes together. The buttons store specific requirements, ensuring individual needs are met discreetly and efficiently, and at the same time freeing up more staff time to focus on care delivery.

Councillor Dave Liversidge, Nottingham City Council's spokesperson for Adult Services, Housing and Health said: "As we continue to develop services for residents in our Care Homes for Older People, managers are constantly looking to promote, improve and maintain standards around person-centred care.

"The RFID buttons will help us to ensure that we meet those standards by being able to care for residents' clothes according to their individual wishes. It will also assist in ensuring that residents' clothes are easily identified and with their rightful owner."

Previously, residents in Nottingham had resorted to writing their names inside their clothing or sewing on name tags but both of these methods can damage the clothing and are undignified for older people.

The buttons have been designed to be easy to install but difficult to remove, so they cannot be taken off by accident or during washing. They can be programmed to store up to 200 characters, which can include the person's name, unit, room number and any other information that they may wish to keep private, providing residents with a personalised level of care.

Programming and scanning the buttons is performed by a mobile hand-held reader, which allows staff to quickly identify an individual item of clothing, eliminating the cost of replacing unclaimed garments and allowing more time to focus on caring for residents. Each button is also reusable and can be easily reprogrammed to update a resident's circumstances.

Residents that have been involved with the project have all been very positive about the initiative, as it provides them with the reassurance that the clothing they receive will be their own. This helps to preserve their identity and plays an important role in reducing anxiety and stress.

The service also provides invaluable reassurance to families that their relative is receiving personalised care and that they are being treated as an individual. Once established, families will also be sent an update of the success of the technology and by regularly engaging with family members and carers, Nottingham City Council is committed to making them part of the care process.

The scheme coincides with the Dignity in Care Campaign, which was launched by the former Minister for Care Services, Ivan Lewis MP. It aims to eliminate tolerance of indignity in health and social care services through raising awareness and inspiring people to take action.

As part of Nottingham's commitment to dementia services, the information from this project will be shared across the council’s intranet website to create best practice in the region.

To read a Case Study about Nottingham City's deployment of RFID buttons for laundry management visit www.tunstall.co.uk.

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS
Proposal Submission Deadline: October 30, 2008
Pervasive and Smart Technologies for Healthcare: Ubiquitous Methodologies and Tools

A book edited by Antonio Coronato and Giuseppe De Pietro
Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking - National Research Council, Italy

Introduction
Pervasive healthcare is an emerging discipline regarding the application of wireless, mobile and intelligent technologies to healthcare. Its main aim consists of making healthcare available to anyone, anytime, and anywhere.
Pervasive healthcare tries to provide solutions to a variety of new challenges for healthcare systems as the number of incidences of life-style related and chronic diseases increases. Pervasive healthcare has assisting in identifying solutions in such areas as:

i) the need to decentralize patient care from hospital to home;
ii) the need for improving disease prevention and self-care;
iii) the need to provide seamless and pervasive access to health care services.

In addition, pervasive healthcare is opening a wide range of innovative applications from remote monitoring of elder people or ill patients to new intelligent environments for healthcare (Eg. Intelligent Surgery Rooms, Smart Spaces for Doctor Consulting, etc.).

Objective of the Book
This book will aim to provide the state of the art and potentialities regarding the application of pervasive computing technologies, methodologies and tools in healthcare.

Target Audience
The target audience of this book will be composed of professionals and researchers working in the field of healthcare in various disciplines, e.g. engineering, medicine, economics, and ICT.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Enabling Technologies for Pervasive Healthcare
* Mobile Medical Devices
* Bio-Sensors and Body Sensor Networks
* Pervasive Computing in Hospitals
* Intelligent Emergency Response and Management
* Pervasive Computing at Home
* Patient Monitoring
* Ambient Assisted Living
* Pervasive Computing for Mobile Patients
* Mobile Telemedicine
* Location Based Medical Services
* Pervasive Access to Medical Data
* Pervasive and Immersive Cooperative Work Environments for Healthcare
* Security and Dependability of Pervasive Healthcare Applications
* Designing Pervasive Healthcare Applications
* Business Opportunities

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before October 30, 2008, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter , and short biography (200-300 words). Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by November 15, 2008 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines.
Full chapters are expected to be submitted by February 15, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference) and "Medical Information Science Reference" imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to:
Antonio Coronato or Giuseppe De Pietro

Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking - National Research Council
Via P. Castellino 111, 80131 - Italy
Tel.: +39. 0816139503 • Fax: +39. 0816139531 • GSM: +39. 3288647500
E-mail: pervhealth@na.icar.cnr.it
Web: www.na.icar.cnr.it/pervhealth

Call for Papers

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 health care 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.

The Pervasive Healthcare conference aims to gather together
technology experts, practitioners, industry and national authorities
contributing towards the development and application of
human-centered pervasive and ubiquitous computing technology for
healthcare and wellness.

CONTRIBUTIONS

We seek novel, innovative, and exciting work in areas including but not limited to:

Technology

• Design and evaluation of patient and ambient-related sensors
• Wearable and implantable sensor integration
• Sensor networks for pervasive healthcare
• Data fusion in pervasive healthcare environments
• Physiological models for interpreting medical sensor data
• Decision support algorithms for sensor analysis

User Needs

• Usability and acceptability issues
• Social implications
• Coverage and delivery of pervasive healthcare services
• Diversity of patients and their specific requirements
• Telemedicine

Applications

• Clinical applications, validation and evaluation studies
• Pervasive healthcare applications for citizen for chronic disease management & health risk management
• Health promotion, and disease prevention
• Wearable, ambient and home based health and wellness measurement and monitoring technologies
• Continuous vs event-driven monitoring of patients in diverse environments
• Feedback

Management of Pervasive Healthcare

• Business cases and cost issues
• Electronic citizen-managed health records
• Security and privacy in pervasive healthcare
• Training of healthcare professional for pervasive healthcare
• Legal and regulatory issues in pervasive healthcare
• Insurance payments and cost aspects
• Standards and interoperability in pervasive healthcare
• Using mobile devices for healthcare information storage, update, and transmission

TYPE OF SUBMISSIONS

Pervasive Health will accept submissions in the following categories:

1 Full papers (6-8 pages submissions) - Full papers are submissions describing results and original research work not submitted or published elsewhere in one of the four main categories listed below.
Full papers should properly place the work within the field, cite
related work, and clearly indicate the innovative aspects of the work
and its contribution to the field.

2 Posters (3-4 pages submissions) - Authors are invited to submit
work in progress whose preliminary results are already interesting to
Pervasive Health audience. The poster track will give Pervasive
Health attendees a way to learn about ongoing research initiatives
and will provide presenters with an excellent opportunity to receive
invaluable direct feedback from experts.

3 Demos (2 pages submissions) - For the first time, Pervasive Health
Conference proposes a demo track that will showcase the latest
developments and prototypes related to the topics of interest of the
conference. The expected demo submissions should describe the demo
from both, the technical side and its contribution to healthcare
aspects.

4 Position Papers (2 pages submissions) - Position papers are
envisioned to provide insight into the lessons learnt from current
(industrial, practitioners, government, etc.) pervasive healthcare
practice. The position papers track is envisioned to provide the view
of practitioners to the pervasive health community in order to have a
more clear understanding about the real needs of healthcare operators
and in this way shorten the gap between technologists and the
every-day needs of practitioners.

5 Workshops (2 pages submissions) Several workshops will be run in
conjunction with the conference. The purpose of these workshops is to
discuss work in progress and explore opportunities for new research
related to pervasive healthcare. Proposals for workshops should be
submitted directly to the workshops co-chairs..

IMPORTANT DATES

Full papers, Posters, Demos & Position Papers due: December 5, 2008
Notification of Acceptance: February 8, 2009
Camera-ready Manuscripts due: February 27, 2009
Conference Dates: April 1 - 3, 2009

Margarita Anastassova
CREATE-NET
Post-Doc Researcher
Via alla Cascata, 56 C Building D - 38100 Trento - Italy
e-mail: margarita.anastassova@create-net.org
Tel: (+39) 0461 314952
Fax: (+39) 0461 314972

eTELEMED 2009 - Call for Papers

We are facing the generalization of digital society across multiple social areas. The globalization imposes the revision of the health costs a society can support. The progress in difference domains, such as image processing, wireless communications, computer vision, cardiology, and information storage and management assure a virtual team to access online to the latest achievements.

Processing medical data benefits now from advanced techniques for color imaging, visualization of multi-dimensional projections, Internet imaging localization archiving as well as from a higher resolution of medical devices.

Collecting, storing, and handling patient data requires robust processing systems, safe communications and storage, and easy and authenticated online access.

We assist to a unprecedented and rapid deployment of use of electronic imagery, navigation portals, positive attitude on telemedicine, distributed surgery teams, tele-cardiology, and remote medicine. Development of wireless homecare, of special types of communications with patient data, of videoconferencing and telepresence, and the progress in image processing and date protection increased the eHealth applications and services, and extended Internet-based patient coverage areas. Social and economic aspects as well as the integration of classical systems with the telemedicine systems are still challenging issues.

There are several dedicated events on these topics, usually concentrated on local problems (national), or geographical areas (Europe, Americas), as social and governmental rules may differ; eTELEMED 2009 considers advances in techniques, services, and applications dedicated to a global approach of eHealth, including a regard on federated aspects considering the mobility of population, the cross-nations agreements, and the new information technology tools.

HEALTHINF 2009 - http://www.healthinf.org (the International Conference on Health Informatics) has an open call for papers, whose deadline is at the end of this month. We hope you can participate in this prestigious conference by submitting a paper reflecting your current research.

Technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the Workflow Management Coallition (WfMC) and in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), HEALTHINF brings together top researchers and practitioners in several areas of Biomedical Engineering, from multiple areas of knowledge, including the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare and medicine in general. Furthermore, this conference is also a meeting place for those interested in understanding the human and social implications of technology, not only in healthcare systems but in every aspect of human-machine interaction.

HEALTHINF will be held in Porto (Portugal) next year, on January 14 - 17. Paper submission deadline is scheduled for June 27.
The conference program includes a number of Keynote Lectures to be delivered by distinguished world-class researchers, including those listed below.

Submitted papers will be subject to a double-blind review process. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISBN reference, in paper and in CD-ROM support. The proceedings will be indexed by several major international indexers, including INSPEC and DBLP. Additionaly, a selection of the best papers of the conference will be published in a book, by Springer-Verlag. Best paper awards will be distributed during the conference.

Further details can be found at the HEALTHINF conference web site (http://www.healthinf.org) This conference is co-located and part of the Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC www.biostec.org).

Workshops and special sessions are also invited. If you wish to propose a workshop or a special session, for example based on the results of a specific research project, please contact the secretariat.

Best regards,
Marina Carvalho
HEALTHINF Secretariat
Av. D.Manuel I, 27A 2ºesq.
2910-595 Setúbal, Portugal
Tel.: +351 265 520 185
Fax: +44 203 014 5436
Email: secretariat@healthinf.org

The Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative and progressive disease. Its incidence advances together with the individual’s age and it causes a severe deterioration in memory, thought and behaviour of the affected.

One of the main mechanisms involved in the origin of the disease is the lack of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that impinges greatly on brain processes and other cognitive functions.

On affected persons it is usually implemented a pharmacological treatment with medicines that inhibit an enzyme called cholinesterase, whose main function is the acetylcholine decomposition. Therefore, the enzymatic activity of the cholinesterase makes worse the frame and the course of the brain pathology.

In United States waste water, researchers of the University and the Federal Polytechnic of Zurich (EFPZ) found a species of blue alga that contains a promising substance for Alzheimer’s.

The substance found was already baptized with the name of nostocarboline, which derives from the name of the alga that contains it. This substance was analysed and according to the laboratory tests, it neutralizes the cholinesterase enzyme.

Moreover, during the evaluation of the nostocarboline it was observed that, with the exception of an atom of chlorine, its chemical structure is identical to the one of a molecule generated by the brain.

Everything indicates that the new natural substance can be greatly beneficial for the individuals who suffer this ailment.

While many years may pass until a medicine based in this substance was synthesized. The treatment would be derived from a natural product and besides this, since it is structurally similar to a human being compound, it is probably that its tolerance will be much more favourable decreasing to a minimum the adverse effects of the pharmacotherapy.

This new discovery gives hope to a lot of persons that wait for a more natural and with better results alternative to face up the disease.

Via:

• http://www.vitonica.com/2008/03/26-un-nuevo-componente-de-la-naturaleza
• http://www.opensportlife.es/remedio-natural-para-el-alzheimer/

This video, developed by Niels Snoeck of the COGKNOW consortium,  demonstrates the Activity Assistance Module used in the second field trial of the European research project COGKNOW. This work is supported by the European Commission, Contract 034025.

eHealth 2008 at the City University, London between the 8th and 9th of September, 2008. This event is devoted to analyze the role that eHealth will play in the delivery of healthcare records across the globe.

Today's advancement of eHealth products and applications and their wider level of implementation along several countries across the globe has made the policy makers and other stakeholders to assess carefully future developments, taking into account the need to build seamless information exchange networks across regions and countries. eHealth developments are improving the right of access to quality healthcare regardless of their personal condition and geographical location, allowing the selection of the appropriate health resource from anywhere at any time. Far from restricting growth, the drive in standardization in individual countries is stimulating take-up and new products. Taking an overall view, as more IT vendors comply with government regulation, the systems integrate better and customers and clients receive more efficient products.

Rigid standards also encourage new companies to supply equipment and software to the market, as not only do they not have to design specific systems for each country but also government funds may, in some case, be available for development. This is particularly true for North American healthcare IT companies, which have previous experience complying with regulations in their home continent. The different tracks and sessions of the Conference will favor the dissemination of results of research and technological innovation and allow the exchange of eHealth experiences between the various countries and regions, facilitating the definition of health and technology strategies and policies.

This Conference is organized as a meeting point for telecare product vendors, policy makers, government ministers, academics, clinicians and all those involved in electronic & mobile health, to examine and to share ideas contributing to the advancement of telecare into the 21st century.