Health Informatics Meets Ehealth

Ineffective discharge management can jeopardize the successful completion of hospital treatment; but a well managed transition from hospital care to care at home depends on the efficient exchange of information with out-patient healthcare providers and professionals. This is just one way in which ICT can support healthcare and provide tools which help health professions to identify and communicate relevant data. Such tools will be increasingly important in future healthcare systems, and indeed a Europe-wide ICT infrastructure for information and data exchange may do much to revolutionize the quality of healthcare. It is therefore essential that infrastructures build on well-established standards such as Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), even if this initially takes longer to implement. This book presents the proceedings of the annual Health Informatics meets eHealth conference, held in Vienna, Austria, in May 2017. The special topic chosen for eHealth2017 is Digital Insight – Information-Driven Health & Care, and the conference addressed the increasingly international focus of eHealth and the importance of cross-border health ICT. The papers presented here cover many eHealth topics, from maternity records to rehabilitation and from staff training to information exchange. Future ICT systems will inevitably involve machine learning and predictive analytics in order to provide actionable information to health professionals and support preventive healthcare concepts, and this book provides an insight into current research in health informatics and eHealth, addressing many issues central to the future of health and care. The book will be of interest to all healthcare researchers and practitioners.

Biomedical engineering and health informatics are closely related to each other, and it is often difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, but ICT systems in healthcare and biomedical systems and devices are already becoming increasingly interconnected, and share the common entity of data. This is something which is set to become even more prevalent in future, and will complete the chain and flow of information from the sensor, via processing, to the actuator, which may be anyone or anything from a human healthcare professional to a robot. Methods for automating the processing of information, such as signal processing, machine learning, predictive analytics and decision support, are increasingly important for providing actionable information and supporting personalized and preventive healthcare protocols in both biomedical and digital healthcare systems and applications. This book of proceedings presents 50 papers from the 12th eHealth conference, eHealth2018, held in Vienna, Austria, in May 2018. The theme of this year’s conference is Biomedical Meets eHealth – From Sensors to Decisions, and the papers included here cover a wide range of topics from the field of eHealth. The book will be of interest to all those working to design and implement healthcare today.

Progress in medicine has traditionally relied heavily on classical research pathways involving randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to establish reliable evidence for any given therapeutic intervention. However, not only are RCTs lengthy and expensive, they have a number of other disadvantages, including the fact that they are currently failing to keep pace with the number of potential innovative treatment options being developed, particularly in areas such as rare diseases. With the vast amount of data increasingly available for use in profiling patient characteristics and establishing correlations between outcomes and potential predictors, predictive modeling may offer a potential solution to the limitations of RCTs. This book presents the proceedings of the 2016 Health Informatics meets eHealth conference, held in Vienna, Austria in May 2016. The conference provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, decision makers and vendors to discuss innovative health informatics and eHealth solutions with a view to improving the quality, efficacy and efficiency of healthcare. The theme of the conference is Predictive Modeling in Healthcare. Covering subjects as diverse as fall-detection in the elderly, diabetes, physiotherapy and pediatric oncology, this book will be of interest to all those working in the field of (e)healthcare and its delivery.

It is generally accepted that information and communication technology has the potential to support high quality, high-tech medicine, but up to now healthcare has lagged behind other sectors, such as service industries, in the implementation of such technology. Medicine is now beginning to catch up, however, and the Austrian government recently agreed on the nationwide implementation of an Electronic Health Record (Elektronische Gesundheitsakte (ELGA))._x000D_ This book presents the proceedings of the 8th scientific eHealth conference, which is being held in Vienna, Austria, in the context of the eHealth Summit Austria, in April 2014. The theme of the conference is "Outcomes Research: The Benefit of Health-IT", addressing the challenges which will inevitably accompany the new opportunities offered by the increased use of ICT in healthcare. The history of technologies making the transition from the laboratory into practice is one of mixed success. It is vital to understand what makes such an implementation a positive one, and factors such as the needs, fears, and context of potential users are as important as a sound technical implementation. Priorities may need to be rethought and new dimensions added._x000D_ The book will be of interest to all those considering the effect of new technologies and eHealth on the provision of healthcare systems, and seeking to achieve services which are both technically and organizationally sound and which will also efficiently deliver noticeable benefits for users.

We have all become familiar with the term ‘eHealth’, used to refer to health informatics and the digital aspects of healthcare; but what is dHealth? This book presents the proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Health Informatics Meets Digital Health (dHealth 2019), held in Vienna, Austria, on 28 – 29 May 2019. In keeping with its interdisciplinary mission, the conference series provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, decision makers and vendors to discuss innovative health informatics and eHealth solutions to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare using digital technologies. The subtitle and special focus of dHealth 2019 is ‘from eHealth to dHealth’, which stresses that healthcare will in future become ever more data-driven. While eHealth in general concerns healthcare IT solutions and professional healthcare providers, dHealth addresses broader fields of application in many areas of life, including sensors and sensor informatics, networks, genomics and bioinformatics, data-centered solutions, machine learning, and many more. The 32 papers included here provide an insight into the state-of-the-art of different aspects of dHealth, including the design and evaluation of user interfaces, patient-centered solutions, electronic health/medical/patient records, machine learning in healthcare and biomedical data analytics, and the book offers the reader an interdisciplinary approach to digital health. It will be of interest to researchers, developers, and healthcare professionals alike.

Traditionally, medicine has involved therapies chosen according to clinical guidelines, often arrived at through clinical trials which categorized patients into patient groups. Such clinical guidelines would dictate that all patients within a specific group should be treated in exactly the same way. More recently, the paradigm has shifted towards personalized medicine, and in future, individual treatment plans will depend more on the specific characteristics of individual patients, including genomic data. This book presents the proceedings of the 9th scientific eHealth conference, the eHealth Summit Austria, held in Vienna, Austria, in June 2015. Among the main topics addressed at the conference were: active and ambient assisted living (AAL); eHealth education; electronic patient and health records; ethical legal and economic aspects of eHealth; ICT for integrated treatment, research and personalized medicine; patient portals and personal health records; semantic interoperability of information systems; and visualization of clinical or epidemiological data. One of the first fields of application for personalized medicine has been oncology, with current diagnostic tools including molecular risk factors, biomarkers and individual genomes. The next step in personalized medicine will be to extend these to a more general, personalized health approach. Such individual risk assessment and preventive strategies promise to have a huge impact on our healthcare systems, and this book will be of interest to all those involved in healthcare research, provision and practice.

Digital technologies have become an integral part of all our lives, and the area of healthcare is no exception. This book presents the proceedings of the 17th annual conference on Health Informatics meets Digital Health (dHealth 2023), held in Vienna, Austria, on 16 and 17 May 2023. The conference series provides a forum for researchers and decision makers, health professionals, healthcare providers, and government and industry representatives to present and discuss innovative digital-health solutions with the aim of improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare using digital technologies. The ‘d’ in dHealth encompasses concepts such as digitalization, datafication and data-driven decision making, as well as predictive modeling and “deep” health for better patient outcomes and sustainability in healthcare, and the 47 papers included here offer an insight into state-of-the-art aspects of dHealth, including the design and evaluation of user interfaces, patient-centered solutions, electronic health/medical/patient records, telemedical approaches and solutions, predictive models, machine learning in healthcare and biomedical data analytics. The book provides an interdisciplinary overview of current research activities in digital health, and will be of interest to all those working in the field.

Patients and medical professionals alike are slowly growing into the digital advances that are revolutionizing the ways that medical records are maintained in addition to the delivery of healthcare services. As technology continues to advance, so do the applications of technological innovation within the healthcare sector. The Encyclopedia of E-Health and Telemedicine is an authoritative reference source featuring emerging technological developments and solutions within the field of medicine. Emphasizing critical research-based articles on digital trends, including big data, mobile applications, electronic records management, and data privacy, and how these trends are being applied within the healthcare sector, this encyclopedia is a critical addition to academic and medical libraries and meets the research needs of healthcare professionals, researchers, and medical students.