Conference Link: http://www.healthinf.biostec.org/

Foreword: This volume contains the proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF 2011), sponsored by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information Control and Communication (INSTICC), technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMB), the IEEE EMBS Portugal, the European Society for Engineering and Medicine (ESEM), the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and in cooperation with Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and Euromicro. The purpose of the International Conference on Health Informatics is to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare and medicine in general and to the specialized support to persons with special needs in particular. Databases, networking, graphical interfaces, intelligent decision support systems and specialized programming languages are just a few of the technologies currently used in medical informatics. Mobility and ubiquity in healthcare systems, standardization of technologies and procedures, certification, privacy are some of the issues that medical informatics professionals and the ICT industry in general need to address in order to further promote ICT in healthcare. In the case of medical rehabilitation and assistive technology the use of ICT has had important results in the enhancement of the quality of life, contributing to a full integration of all citizens in the societies they are also part of. HEALTHINF is one of four integrated conferences that are co-located and constitute the International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC). The other three component conferences are BIOSIGNALS (International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing), BIODEVICES (International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices) and BIOINFORMATICS (International Conference on Bioinformatics Models, Methods and Algorithms). The joint conference, BIOSTEC, has received 538 paper submissions from 63 countries in all continents. 48 papers were published and presented as full papers, i.e. completed work (10 pages/30’ oral presentation), 158 papers reflecting work-in-progress or position papers were accepted for short presentation, and another 121 contributions were accepted for poster presentation. These numbers, leading to a “full-paper” acceptance ratio of about 9% and a total oral paper presentations acceptance ratio close to 38%, show the intention of preserving a high quality forum for the next editions of this conference. The joint conference included a panel and six invited talks delivered by internationally distinguished speakers, namely: Sergio Cerutti (Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy), Alberto Cliquet Jr. (State University of Campinas, Brazil), Mário Forjaz Secca (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal), Tanja Schultz (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany), Bruno Sobral (Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, U.S.A.) and Bradley Nelson (ETH Zurich, Switzerland). Their participation has positively contributed to reinforce the overall quality of the Conference and to provide a deeper understanding of the field of Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies. The proceedings of the conference will be submitted for indexation by Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index, INSPEC, DBLP and EI. A book with extended and revised versions of a short list of the selected best papers from the conference will be published by Springer-Verlag in the series of Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS). The program for this conference required the dedicated effort of many people. Firstly, we must thank the authors, whose research and development efforts are recorded here. Secondly, we thank the members of the program committee and the additional reviewers for their diligence and expert reviewing. Thirdly, we thank the keynote speakers for their invaluable contribution and for taking the time to synthesise and prepare their talks. Fourthly, we thank the program chair, Vicente Traver, whose collaboration was much appreciated. Finally, special thanks to all the members of the INSTICC team whose collaboration was fundamental for the success of this conference. The organization will distribute two paper awards at the conference closing session: the best paper award and the best student paper award. The decision is mainly based on the paper classifications provided by the Program Committee and the paper presentation at the conference, assessed by the session chairs. We wish you all an exciting conference and an unforgettable stay in the city of Rome and we hope to meet you again next year for HEALTHINF 2012, details of which will soon be available at http://www.healthinf.biostec.org. (More)

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