Informatics and technology have become an intrinsic part of healthcare management in recent years; it is almost impossible to imagine a modern healthcare system without them. This book presents the proceedings of the 14th annual International Conference on Informatics, Management and Technology in Healthcare (ICIMTH), held in Athens, Greece, in July 2016. The conference treats the field of biomedical informatics in a very broad framework, and the 68 full papers included here examine the research and applications outcomes of informatics from cell to population, including a number of technologies such as imaging, sensors, mobile communications, biomedical equipment and management, as well as legal and societal issues related to the application of health informatics. The book is divided into sections: Biomedical Technology; Clinical Informatics; E-learning and Education; Formalisation of Knowledge, Ontologies, Clinical Guidelines and Standards of Healthcare; Health Informatics; Healthcare Management and Public Health; mHealth and Telemedicine; and Social Media and Health. Also included are two keynote speeches. Covering a wide spectrum of applications, the book will be of interest to all those working in the design, management and delivery of healthcare services whose work involves the development or use of biomedical informatics.

Stringent ways of thinking, ‘conceptual frameworks’, are necessary in science. The drawback is that the associated assumptions, concepts, rules and practice may become so deeply entrenched that they turn into tacit knowledge and hence give rise to constraints in scientific thought and practice – that is, a new kind of plethora that seriously blinds and thereby hampers scientific progress. This book, 'A Unifying Theory of Evolution Generated by Means of Information Modelling', presents a methodology for describing complex knowledge domains. It applies a template information model based on a dynamic structure of interrelated functions, called the Mereon Matrix. Application of this template model to the field of evolutionary theories enabled the unification of the sometimes chaotic and competing field of evolutionary theories, large and small, seamlessly in a shared framework. The author has Masters degrees in both biochemistry and computer science, as well as a European Doctorate and PhD in health informatics and has spent 35 years in full-time research. It is her particular combination of professional experience and expertise together with the template information model which has enabled her to write this book. Whilst primarily aimed at a scientific audience, and evolutionary biologists in particular, the book will be of interest to all those looking for new approaches to exploring and explaining phenomena in nature, and because the text is largely non-technical in nature, much of the content will also be accessible to a wider readership.

Nursing informatics has a long history of focusing on information management and nurses have a long history of describing their computer use. However, based on the technical advances and through the ongoing and consistent changes in healthcare today, we are now challenged to look to the future and help determine what nurses and patients/consumers will need going forward. This book presents the proceedings of the Post Conference to the 13th International Conference on Nursing Informatics, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2016. The theme of the Post Conference is Forecasting Informatics Competencies for Nurses in the Future of Connected Health. This book includes 25 chapters written as part of the Post Conference; a result of the collaboration among nursing informatics experts from research, education and practice settings, from 18 countries, and from varying levels of expertise – those beginning to forge new frontiers in connected health and those who helped form the discipline. The book content will help forecast and define the informatics competencies for nurses in practice, and as such, it will also help outline the requirements for informatics training in nursing programs around the world. The content will aid in shaping the nursing practice that will exist in our future of connected health, when practice and technology will be inextricably intertwined.

Health Information Technology (HIT) continues to increase in importance as a component of healthcare provision, but designing HIT is complex. The creation of cooperative learning processes for future HIT users is not a simple task. The importance of engaging end users such as health professionals, patients and relatives in the design process is widely acknowledged, and Participatory Design (PD) is the primary discipline for directly involving people in the technological design process. Exploring the application of PD in HIT is crucial to all those involved in engaging end users in HIT design and, in collaboration with a wide range of people, a broad repertoire of methods and techniques to apply PD within multiple domains has been established. This book, Participatory Design & Health Information Technology, presents the contributions of researchers from 5 countries, who share their experience and insights into applying PD in the development of HIT. The book begins with a review of PD and HIT research, followed by 10 papers, each of which describes important lessons for HIT designers interested in user participation. The papers are grouped under the themes of participatory processes; participatory reflections; participatory business; and participatory inspiration. The book will be of interest to researchers, students, health professionals, IT designers and managers who work with or are interested in supporting participation in the design of HIT.

There is a changed emphasis in many health services, with conventional pressures such as budget and workforce constraints, combined with the indirect forces of social change and strategic direction, bringing about the need for more flexible approaches for the longer term. By enabling different care models and delivery channels, telehealth offers demonstrably effective and sustainable solutions for issues such as access to and quality of care. This book presents 18 papers delivered at the 5th Global Telehealth Conference, held in Auckland, New Zealand, in November 2016. The theme chosen for Global Telehealth 2016 is 'The Promise of New Technologies in an Age of New Health Challenges', and the papers included here cover a wide variety of topics, from theoretical and abstract contributions through to discussions of practical projects and highly specific applied contributions. The book also includes two invited papers which detail recent contributions to two global issues in which telehealth plays a major role: universal health coverage and personal health monitoring. With papers ranging in scope from computer assisted screening technology for diabetic retinopathy to behavior change through computer games, this book will be of interest to all those involved in the design and provision of healthcare services.

In the last few decades, health informaticians have established the knowledge base and practical expertise to facilitate the development of ever-more capable technical systems, increased connectivity, expanded access and the greater mobility of e-health and information management systems, and we have witnessed the evolution from simple computer-based records to systems allowing intra-organisational, national, and even international communication and information exchange. This book presents 20 of the papers delivered at the 24th Australian National Health Informatics Conference (HIC 2016), held in Melbourne, Australia in July 2016. The primary theme of the 2016 conference is Digital Health Innovation for Consumers, Clinicians, Connectivity and Community. The papers included here reflect this theme, and highlight the cutting edge research evidence, technology updates and innovations that are fuelling the digital transformation of the healthcare sector. They cover a wide spectrum of fields and encompass major theoretical concepts, examples of key applications of new technologies and important new developments in the field of health informatics. The book provides a current overview of trends in health informatics, and will be of interest to all those involved in the planning, design, implementation and delivery of healthcare today.

The field of health is an increasingly complex and technical one; and an area in which a more multidisciplinary approach would undoubtedly be beneficial in many ways. This book presents papers from the conference ‘Health – Exploring Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach’, held in Munich, Germany, from August 28th to September 2nd 2016. This joint conference unites the conferences of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS), the German Society for Epidemiology (DGEpi), the International Epidemiological Association - European Region, and the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI). These societies already have long-standing experience of integrating the disciplines of medical informatics, biometry, epidemiology and health data management. The book contains over 160 papers, and is divided into 14 sections covering subject areas such as: health and clinical information systems; eHealth and telemedicine; big data and advanced analytics; and evidence-based health informatics, evaluation and education, among many others. The book will be of value to all those working in the field of health and interested in finding new ways to enable the collaboration of different scientific disciplines and the establishment of comprehensive methodological approaches.

Universal Design is the term used to describe the design of products and environments which can be used by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. It is not a euphemism for ‘designs for people with a disability’, but really is about designing to include all people, regardless of their age, ability, cultural background or status in life. However it remains the case that many designers and developers fail to understand the need for universal design and lack the skills needed to implement it. This book presents papers from the 3rd International Conference on Universal Design (UD 2016), held in York, UK, in August 2016. The theme of the conference was: learning from the past, designing for the future, and it aimed to bring together policymakers, practitioners and researchers interested in the different strands of universal design to exchange ideas and best practice, review some of the developments in universal design from the last 20 years, and formulate strategies for taking the concept of universal design forward into the future. The book is divided into two sections. Section 1: About Universal Design, and Section 2: Universal Design In Practice. The book will be of interest to all those whose work involves design, from the built environment and tangible products to communication, services and systems.

Two of the most important developments of this new century are the emergence of cloud computing and big data. However, the uncertainties surrounding the failure of cloud service providers to clearly assert ownership rights over data and databases during cloud computing transactions and big data services have been perceived as imposing legal risks and transaction costs. This lack of clear ownership rights is also seen as slowing down the capacity of the Internet market to thrive. Click-through agreements drafted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis govern the current state of the art, and they do not allow much room for negotiation. The novel contribution of this book proffers a new contractual model advocating the extension of the negotiation capabilities of cloud customers, thus enabling an automated and machine-readable framework, orchestrated by a cloud broker. Cloud computing and big data are constantly evolving and transforming into new paradigms where cloud brokers are predicted to play a vital role as innovation intermediaries adding extra value to the entire life cycle. This evolution will alleviate the legal uncertainties in society by means of embedding legal requirements in the user interface and related computer systems or its code. This book situates the theories of law and economics and behavioral law and economics in the context of cloud computing and takes database rights and ownership rights of data as prime examples to represent the problem of collecting, outsourcing, and sharing data and databases on a global scale. It does this by highlighting the legal constraints concerning ownership rights of data and databases and proposes finding a solution outside the boundaries and limitations of the law. By allowing cloud brokers to establish themselves in the market as entities coordinating and actively engaging in the negotiation of service-level agreements (SLAs), individual customers as well as small and medium-sized enterprises could efficiently and effortlessly choose a cloud provider that best suits their needs. This approach, which the author calls “plan-like architectures,” endeavors to create a more trustworthy cloud computing environment and to yield radical new results for the development of the cloud computing and big data markets.

Risk Assessment in Forensic Practice sets out a concise critical review of the way in which risk is assessed in current forensic practice. Setting the area in its historical context, this text outlines current practice in an accessible and clear format and discusses major critiques as well as the ways in which current practice might be developed to improve public protection. Providing an account of the main issues involved in risk and probability and the ways that these have been applied in practice, the book describes current forensic practice in relation to the dominant algorithmic and checklist-based methods. Critiques of these arising from social-legal, risk analysis and experimental psychology perspectives are summarised, and questions of the accuracy, fairness and lack of analysis are considered, along with the main challenges associated with making group and individual predictions of events. The text rejects the idea that clinical assessments of risk are generally ineffective and stresses the role of environmental context, training and expertise in improving practice. Through the author’s work in the field, this text also offers insight into the ways in which current practice might be improved and calls for greater analysis and methodological rigour. Risk Assessment in Forensic Practice appeals to a wide range of forensic practitioners including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, mental health nurses and lawyers. The text is also relevant to those involved in management and decision-making across forensic settings.