Health Informatics for the Developing World

Submission Deadline: 1 July 2017

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Health Informatics for the Developing World.

We live in a world with growing disparity between the lives of rich and poor. This difference is starkest when one compares the health facilities afforded to the rich living in developed countries and those available to the unprivileged in the developing world. Healthcare in the developing world is fraught with numerous problems—such as lack of health infrastructure and professionals and increasingly limited health coverage. In recent years, the field of health informatics has made great strides towards the improvement of public health systems in the developing world through augmentation of traditional health facilities using state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Through real-world deployment of these technologies, there is real hope that the health industry in the developing world will progress from its current, largely dysfunctional state to one that is more effective, personalized, and cost-efficient for all stakeholders. One of the most promising health informatics trends—buoyed by the rapid adoption of mobile phone technology throughout the world—is m-health (mobile-health). Such connected health informaticscan usher a new era of personalized health analytics, with the potential to transform healthcare in the developing world.

In conjunction with m-health many other important health informatics trends are also emerging. Exponentially growing heterogeneous data, with the help of big data analytics, has the potential to provide descriptive, predictive and prescriptive insights into future individual and population healthcare needs. Such systems could enhance the overall process of monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis of chronic diseases. In particular, there is an immense potential for exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based health informatics in combination with cloud computing, and crowdsourcing for processing big health data and providing novel health services such as remote health diagnostics.

The aim of this Special Section in IEEE Access on “Health Informatics for the Developing World’’ is to present a snapshot of state-of-the-art technology in this important field. Our aim is to catalyze a convergence of growing research interest in health informatics from diverse fields such as ICT for development (ICTD); telemedicine; m-health; e-health; big data for development; biomedical engineering; human computer interaction (HCI), and to present a holistic integration of such approaches in this Special Section. Papers are solicited on novel concepts, models/architecture, and methodologies of health informatics, with a special focus on the viability of such approaches for the resource-constrained developing world. Topics of interest include, but are not limited, to the following:

Novel health informatics applications for the developing world:

  • Mobile health (m-health) solutions for the developing world
  • Low-cost health informatics solutions for the developing world (both hardware and software)
  • Point-of-care testing and diagnostic solutions for the developing world
  • Innovations in m-health for maternal and newborn health
  • Innovative telemedicine based solutions for the developing world
  • Personalized healthcare and wellbeing solutions for the developing world
  • Innovative health information dissemination solutions for the developing world
  • Energy efficient health informatics solutions for the developing world

Application of various health informatics techniques for the developing world:

  • Crowdsourcing-based health informatics solutions in the developing world
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning based health informatics solutions in the developing world
  • Big data/ Multi-modal data analysis based health informatics solutions in the developing world
  • Natural language processing based health informatics solutions for the developing world
  • Personal health records and self-care systems for the developing world
  • Behavioral health informatics based interventions for the developing world
  • Signal (and image) processing based health informatics solutions in the developing world
  • Internet of things (IoT)-based health informatics solutions for the developing world

Health informatics issues:

  • Reports of practical health informatics deployments in the developing world
  • Accuracy and precision of clinical decision support systems
  • Privacy, security, and governance issues related to health data
  • Ease of usability of health informatics devices
  • Health informatics ethical issues

(Note: Research papers from authors of developed countries that could be relevant for the developing world, are also welcome, on any of the topics above)

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility, downloads, and citations of articles.

Associate Editor: Junaid Qadir, Information Technology University (ITU), Punjab, Pakistan

Guest Editors:

  1. Muhammad Mujeeb-U-Rahman, Integrated Medical Sensors (USA) & Information Technology University (ITU), Punjab, Pakistan
  2. Mubashir Husain Rehmani, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Wah Cantt., Pakistan
  3. Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, Southeast University, Bangladesh
  4. Muhammad Ali Imran, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
  5. Amir Hussain, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
  6. Rajib Rana, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
  7. Bin Luo, Anhui University, China

Related IEEE Access Special Sections:

  1. Healthcare Big Data
  2. Advances of Multisensory Services and Technologies for Healthcare in Smart Cities
  3. Trends and Advances for Ambient Intelligence with Internet of Things (IoT) systems

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Michael Pecht, Professor and Director, CALCE, University of Maryland

Paper submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: Bora M. Onat, Managing Editor, IEEE Access (Phone: (732) 562-6036, specialsections@ieee.org)