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Call for Abstracts: International Society for Disease Surveillance Annual Conference

The ISDS Annual Conference is the premier event dedicated to the advancement of the science and practice of biosurveillance. This year’s theme, Expanding Collaborations to Chart a New Course in Public Health Surveillance, will highlight the importance of working together across agencies, sectors, and disciplines to improve surveillance methods and population health outcomes. The conference will be held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, CA, December 4-5, 2012, with Pre-Conference Workshops on December 3rd.

The ISDS Conference draws professionals from a broad range of disciplines— epidemiology and computer science to mathematical modeling and health policy—to learn and contribute the latest achievements, methodologies, best practices, conceptual frameworks, and technical innovations in the rapidly evolving field of biosurveillance. This year's conference will provide fertile ground for cultivating new ideas and partnerships with roundtable discussions, panels and other opportunities to collaborate.

The scope of this conference includes all of the components, policies, methods, practices, infrastructure, research and evaluation related to timely surveillance of communicable diseases, chronic diseases and injuries. This includes notifiable conditions, adverse events and emerging/novel threats; biological, chemical, and radiological health threats; plant, animal, and food surveillance; and environmental monitoring.

Questions regarding the Call for Abstracts may be sent to Tera Reynolds, ISDS Program Manager.

Submission deadline: September 6, 2012 (11:59pm Eastern Daylight Time)

Authors notified of acceptance: October 3, 2012

Pre-Conference Workshops: December 3, 2012

Annual Conference: December 4-5, 2012

Submission Types

Note: All abstracts for the ISDS Conference will be submitted using ScholarOne. There is a limit of 4810 characters for the text of your submission. The character count includes spaces. The character count WILL include title, authors, institutions, tables, and images, but WILL NOT include presenting author brief biographical summaries (bios) or the abstract summary that will be used in the conference program.

Oral

All abstracts submitted for oral presentation are automatically considered for poster presentation as well. Include the following components when submitting an abstract for oral presentation:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Methods

· Results

· Conclusions

· Acknowledgements

· References

· Names and affiliations of authors

· Brief bio of lead author/intended presenter (450 characters/75 words)

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of submission to be used in conference program

Poster

Include the following components when submitting an abstract for poster presentation:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Methods

· Results

· Conclusions

· Acknowledgements

· References

· Names and affiliations of authors

· Brief bio of lead author/intended presenter (450 characters/75 words)

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of submission (for potential inclusion in conference program)

Panel *New for 2012*

Panel topics should be a specific aspect of design, theory, application, or experience pertaining to the science or practice of biosurveillance. Suggested panels should be comprised of no more than four participants and a moderator. A typical panel session will consist of four 15 minute presentations, each followed by 5 minutes of questions, with 10 minutes for closing discussion (presentation lengths will be subject to change based on final agenda). When submitting an abstract for a panel, include the following components:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Panel description

· How the moderator intends to engage the audience in discussions on the panel topic

· Names of panel presenters, moderator and affiliations

· Brief bios for each panel presenter and moderator (450 characters/75 words each) for abstract reviewers to assess appropriateness to serve on the panel for the described topic

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of panel to be used in conference program

Roundtable *New for 2012*

Roundtables can have up to three facilitators to briefly introduce the topic of interest and facilitate active discussion among attendees. Roundtables must be discussion-oriented rather than didactic, lecture-driven sessions. Roundtable discussions will be 60-90 minutes (depending on final agenda). When submitting an abstract for a roundtable, include the following components:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Roundtable description

· How the facilitator intends to engage the audience in the roundtable discussion, including sample questions

· Names of facilitators and affiliations

· Brief bios for each facilitator (450 characters/75 words each) for abstract reviewers to assess appropriateness to lead a discussion on the described topic

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of roundtable to be used in conference program

System Showcase Demonstrations *New for 2012*

System showcase demonstrations will be presented during the evening poster session on the first day of the conference. A typical demonstration will illustrate one or more aspects of an innovative population/public health surveillance system that is in use or under development. Demonstrations of open source and/or free products are strongly encouraged. System showcase demonstrations are not intended to be marketing or sales presentations and such submissions will be rejected; those interested in supporting the ISDS conference with an exhibit booth should contact Tera Reynolds at ISDS for more information. When submitting an abstract for a system showcase demonstration, include the following components:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Description, highlighting benefits to public/population health surveillance and how this demonstration will be a unique addition to the ISDS conference

· Conclusions, including lessons learned and design principles from this demonstration that attendees can take away, even if not using or intending to use the system demonstrated

· Names of demonstrators and affiliations

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of showcase to be used in conference program

Track Descriptions

I. Analytical Methods

a. Analytical Methods: Applied

b. Analytical Methods: Research & Development

This theme is focused on important and novel advances in the field of surveillance methodologies and analytical approaches. Abstracts in the Applied sub-track should describe methods or processes routinely used in a production-type environment. Abstracts in the Research and Development sub-track should describe methods and processes still under development or tested within a research or pilot setting. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Analytic evaluation of surveillance components

· Decision support

· Estimating morbidity and impact

· Evaluation of algorithms and systems through epidemic simulation

· Geospatial analysis

· Innovative use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology

· Integrating evidence from multiple sources

· Integration of mathematical modeling and statistical analyses

· New algorithms and evaluation of existing algorithms for cluster and event detection

· Pattern recognition algorithms

· Predictive disease modeling/predictive analytics

· Spatial cluster detection

· Statistical methods and tools for analyzing and interpreting data

· Time series analysis

II. Informatics

a. Informatics: Applied

b. Informatics: Research & Development

Abstracts in the Applied sub-track should describe methods or processes routinely used in a production-type environment. Abstracts in the Research and Development sub-track should describe methods and processes still under development or tested within a research or pilot setting. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Advances in methods for classifying data

· Approaches to building interoperable surveillance systems and components

· Borderless data exchange models (e.g. federated information sharing approaches)

· Cloud computing for public health surveillance

· Data integration – acquiring, moving, storing, processing, coding, normalizing, and preparing data for analysis between systems

· Data quality

· Data visualization methods

· Electronic health records and public health surveillance

· Health information exchange

· How clinical information systems can support public health surveillance efforts

· How public health information systems can support clinical efforts

· Informatics lessons learned

· Information and knowledge exchange

· Innovations in public health informatics

· Mobile technologies for public health

· Natural language processing

· Standards and Interoperability Framework (Public Health Reporting Initiative)

· Standards used in public health surveillance

· System architectures for limited connectivity environments and disaster surveillance

· System architectures for surveillance in low-resource environments

· System architectures to leverage HIE for public health surveillance

· System descriptions of real-world solutions to challenging integration problems

· Workforce requirements and training

· Use of social media for biosurveillance

III. Policy (at local, state, federal, international levels)

This theme is focused on sharing successes, challenges or approaches leveraged in the use or development of policy which affects biosurveillance operations and activities. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Creating successful surveillance partnerships

· Data sharing policies

· Federal policy agendas

· Funding strategies for surveillance

· How public health surveillance data have been used to inform policy

· International Health Regulations

· Legal/ethical/security/privacy issues in surveillance

· Meaningful Use responses by public health departments

· Policies around social media/leveraging social networks for risk communication, etc.

· Research collaborations to expand evidence-based health policy

· Workforce

IV. Public/Population health surveillance

a. Public/Population Health Surveillance: Practice

b. Public/Population Health Surveillance: Research

c. Public/Population Health Surveillance: Evaluation

This theme is focused on improving the daily processes of timely public/population health surveillance, including detection, signal validation, event characterization, investigation, and response. Abstracts in the Practice sub-track should describe practices routinely used in a production environment and/or deployed in field by public health departments or other agencies. Abstracts in the Research sub-track should describe research related to surveillance, health systems, etc. Abstracts in the Evaluation sub-track should describe evaluations of public/population health surveillance systems, workflows, protocols, etc. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Adverse drug events and pharmacovigilance

· Case studies

· Chronic disease surveillance

· Collaboration success stories

· Contact tracing and network analysis

· Disaster/event surveillance

· Disparities surveillance

· Evaluation of surveillance systems

· Infectious disease surveillance

· Influenza-like illness surveillance

· Injury surveillance

· Innovations in biosurveillance

· Integrating surveillance across multiple data sources

· Integrating surveillance systems, e.g. syndromic and reportable diseases

· Linking response with frontline health workers

· Meaningful Use and how it’s changing/not changing surveillance practice

· Measuring vaccine efficacy, coverage, etc.

· Messaging/risk communication (what to say to the public, politicians and media about syndromic systems alerts)

· Mobile technologies for public health

· Novel approaches to communicable diseases surveillance and reporting (e.g., notifiable conditions, MRSA, nosocomial infections)

· OneHealth

· Outbreak detection, characterization and outbreak management

· School and university surveillance

· Situational awareness

· Social media and surveillance

· Surveillance across borders

· Surveillance for refugees and recent immigrants

· Surveillance in resource-limited settings

· Surveillance using ambulatory care data

· Surveillance using inpatient data

· Vaccine-preventable disease surveillance

Call for Papers for a Session on Health, Disease, and Physical Culture at the Northeast Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (NEPCA) is soliciting papers for topics in the area of Health, Disease and Culture for its annual meeting, which will be held October 26-26 on the campus of St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Topics in Health, Disease and Culture may include such themes as below: Mass media images of health and disease in popular culture--print, film, television, etc.

Portrayals of health institutions (e.g., hospitals, clinics, medical homes, pharmacies) and health professionals in history, literature or mass media

Portrayals of Prescription Drugs (E.G., Development, Marketing, Advertising, Consumption, Role in Treatment of Chronic Illnesses

Representations of the body in discourses of health and illness

Narratives of illness from patient and health practitioner perspectives in novels, short stories, memoirs, graphic comics, etc., discussed in larger sociocultural (ethnicity, race, gender, class), and political (health care system) contexts

Disability discourses in history, literature, and public policy

Outbreak narratives of infectious diseases (e.g., endemic, epidemic, pandemic) in popular media and literature; infectious diseases in history and public policy

Historical and contemporary perspectives on the promotion of health through diet, exercise, personal or domestic hygiene, cosmetic procedures, public health campaigns (e.g., smoking, obesity).

Focuses on Public Health: The Built Environment, Global Health, Emergency Preparedness, Occupational Health, Surveillance and Public Health

Creative Writing and Health Care Presentations from patient, caregiver, health professional or medical humanities practitioners, etc.

We invite both individual papers and proposals for complete panels (please include titles and abstracts for each panelist). Please send a 1-2 page paper proposal and a one-page vita to both the Program Chair Tim Madigan tmadigan@sjfc.edu and to the Area Chair for Health, Disease and Culture, Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman jennifer.tebbe-grossman@mcphs.edu. The deadline for submission is June 1, 2012.

Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman
Professor of Political Science and American Studies
School of Arts and Sciences
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences-Boston
179 Longwood Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Phone: 617-732-2904
Email: jennifer.tebbe-grossman@mcphs.edu

Call for Papers: 3rd Workshop on Research in the Large – App Stores, Wide Distribution, and Big Data in MobileHCI Research

at MobileHCI 2012, San Francisco, California

Deadline: May 25th, 2012
Workshop: September 21st, 2012

http://large.mobilelifecentre.org

Theme

Traditionally, mobile HCI studies have often been conducted in highly controlled environments, involving small numbers of users. App stores and other wide distribution channels have now provided researchers with a enormous opportunity to move outside the lab. Indeed, many researchers have started to use public deployments and big data for mobile HCI research. Publishing apps in mobile application stores and public APIs for mobile services enable researchers to study large samples in their ‘natural habitat’ – but this also requires adaptation of evaluation and research methods, and dealing with deployment issues previously unencountered by most MobileHCI researchers.

This workshop continues the ‘Research in the Large’ workshop series held at UbiComp 2010 and 2011. Relevant topics include the design of large-scale studies, reaching target users, dealing with new types of evaluation data, and heterogeneous usage contexts. We seek ways to systematically collect, analyse and make sense of large datasets, potentially in real-time.

The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for researchers and developers from academia and industry to exchange experiences, insights and strategies for wide distribution of research apps and the resulting large data streams these deployments produce. We aim at building an understanding of the opportunity of the different channels and the issues and obstacles involved in a research context.

Topics

We welcome participants from both industry and academia who have an interest and/or experience in the following themes:

- Methods & experiences with research through app stores and other distribution platforms
- Strategies for attracting and recruiting a suitable sample
- Dealing with big data: infrastructure, tools and experiences in dealing with large- scale datasets, potentially those growing by millions of data points every day
- Statistical & visual analysis methods and tools for the various sorts of data resulting from public apps
- New developments of distribution channels, tools and infrastructures, and their potential effects
- Dealing with uncertainty and data noise
- Identifying interesting usage and experience patterns for further research
- Combination of large-scale studies with smaller studies
- Re-integration of research in the large outcomes in the design & development process of apps
- Design of appropriate large-scale studies based on given research questions
- Approaches to increase internal and external validity

Submission

Prospective authors are invited to submit their contribution, in PDF format conform to the ACM Mobile HCI 2012 archive format electronically via EasyChair no later than May 25th, 2012. Submissions are expected to be either up to 4 pages describing research that addresses one or more of the workshop’s themes or up to 2 pages position papers on the opportunities and challenges ahead. Papers must be anonymized and will be reviewed by a program committee from industry and academia.

The program committee will nominate a best paper, which will be included in a special issue of the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI).

Important Dates

* Friday May 25, 2012 – Submission Deadline
* Friday June 29, 2012 – Acceptance Notification
* Monday July 23, 2012 – Revised Manuscript Due
* Friday September 21, 2012 – Workshop in San Francisco!

Call for Papers: International Telecommunication Union Kaleidoscope 2013 Building Sustainable Communities Academic Conference

22–24 April 2013, Kyoto, Japan

Kaleidoscope 2013 Building Sustainable Communities is the fifth in a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences organized
by ITU that brings together a wide range of views from universities, industry and research institutions of different fields. The aim of Kaleidoscope conferences is to identify emerging developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at an early stage to generate successful products and services through the development of international and open standards.

Future technologies should be designed to enhance the quality of human life. Kaleidoscope 2013 will, therefore, highlight multidisciplinary aspects of future ICTs including future services and applications demand as well as socio-economic, cultural, ethical, legal, and sustainable development policy aspects of communities of the future.

ICTs can be used as a catalyst for transforming life to meet the challenges of the new millennium, including global economic and
financial crises, high unemployment rates, accessibility issues, global diseases, food availability and distribution, climate change,
environmental disasters, energy consumption, transport systems, safety, security, and welfare.

Sustainable communities will combine human-oriented technologies and human values.

Besides technical issues, building sustainable communities also raises ethical concerns such as responsibility for future generations and for the environment, as well as for data and information privacy. Therefore, an improved understanding of technology, its suitable application, and a high consideration of its potential consequences are necessary.

To address these issues, and for a co-evolution of technology and sustainable communities, standards are indispensable. Developing these standards will require concerted global efforts by inter-sectoral stakeholders. This conference will help to further such collaborations.

Building Sustainable Communities is calling for original academic papers offering innovative and bold approaches in research
and development to build smart, ethical, and sustainable communities.

Submission of papers
Prospective authors, from countries that are Members of ITU, are invited to submit complete, original papers with a maximum
length of 4,500 words within eight pages including summary and references, using the template available on the event website.
Paper proposals will be evaluated according to content, originality, clarity, relevance to the conference’s theme and, in particular, significance to future standards.

Suggested (non-exclusive) list of topics

Track 1: Technology and architecture evolution

-- Long-distance and ultra-high-speed transmission network systems (terabit, exabit)
-- Disaster relief systems, network resilience and recovery
-- Wireless sensor networks
-- Optical wireless communication
-- Human-centric, cognitive and context-aware systems
-- Machine-to-machine communication and Internet of Things
-- Body-area networks
-- Near-field communications
-- Environmental and biometric actuators and sensors
-- Security and privacy-enhancing technologies
-- Pervasive and trusted network and service infrastructure
-- Mobility and nomadicity
-- Adaptive antenna techniques

Track 2: ICT applications and services for sustainable communities

-- e-government and e-democracy
-- e-learning and e-science
-- e-agriculture
-- e-health and telemedicine
-- Ageing and ambient assistive living
-- Smart cities: utilities, transport, buildings and homes
-- Innovative applications and content delivery (IPTV, games, etc.)
-- Mobile payment and money transfer
-- Augmented reality and technology intelligence
-- Location-based services
-- Service layer requirements
-- XaaS (Anything as a Service)
-- QoS for differentiated source
-- Location services

Track 3: Social, economic and policy aspects of ICT in sustainable communities

-- Digital rights and identity management
-- Societal impact
-- Legislative and regulatory frameworks
-- Security, confidentiality and privacy
-- Accessibility and usability
-- Business models (including accounting, billing and charging)
-- Standardization models
-- Network neutrality
-- Inclusiveness, affordability and equal access
-- Internationalization and localization
-- Environmental sustainability
-- Ethical issues
-- Regulation (for QoS, network sharing, etc.)
-- Standardization and innovation management
-- Stakeholder perceptions in standards
-- Standards in healthcare services

Deadlines
Submission of full paper proposals: 10 September 2012
Notification of paper acceptance: 12 November 2012
Submission of camera-ready accepted papers: 3 December 2012

Contact: kaleidoscope@itu.int

Call for Abstracts: Diabetes Technology Meeting

November 8-10, 2012 Bethesda, Maryland

Submit online to: http://www.diabetestechnology.org/abstract_submission_form.shtml

Deadline for submission: July 1, 2012

Acceptance Notification: Late August 2012

Abstract Topic Areas:
Researchers are encouraged to submit an Abstract of their work on diabetes technology, including but not limited to any of the major topics of the meeting:

Glucose monitoring
Insulin and metabolic peptide delivery
Artificial pancreas
Bioartificial pancreas
Cell phone management
Bolus dose calculation
Information technology
Physiologic monitoring
Software for modeling
Hypoglycemia detection
Diagnostic tests of glycation
Insulin pump and pen therapy
Diabetes telemedicine
Improving adherence to therapy using technology
Tests for complications
Technology for managing obesity

Selection Criteria
• Material must not have been presented or published previously.
• The subject area selected will be varied so that a balanced program can be produced.
• All applications must be submitted using the online submission process.

Call for Papers: 2nd International Conference on Global Telehealth - GT2012

“Delivering Quality Healthcare Anywhere Through Telehealth”

25 - 28, 2012 November Sydney, Australia

Telehealth, including telemedicine, patient monitoring and associated eHealth considerations, is currently experiencing a rapid expansion in adoption worldwide. Deployment of new information and communications technologies, and their enabling systems and infrastructure, offer many emerging avenues for implementation of Telehealth solutions. Widespread initiatives by public and private sector health providers with government reimbursement and regulatory support are transforming previously small scale activities into widespread adoption. This situation provides a great opportunity to raise levels of access and increase quality of healthcare globally.

The Telehealth domain of interest covers a broad scope: from enabling direct clinical interventions and interactions by real-time or store-forward processes, to communicating and managing health information in electronic formats, to patient centred care needs such as personal monitoring and care team support, and to education, policy and professional aspects. Mainstream activities in healthcare systems internationally address these areas, and so this conference provides a platform for sharing of best practice and directions.

Telehealth is also acting as a major change driver in global health, particularly in underserved regions and emerging countries. This is aided by the rapid uptake of leapfrog technologies such as mobile wireless communications and portable computing devices, and the deployment of new models and processes of healthcare. The conference will give special emphasis to this sector and particularly invites participation by representatives from Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America.

Contributions are sought addressing current research and practice in Telehealth, including (but not limited to):

• clinical applications of telemedicine
• teleconsultation and telecollaboration
• teleprocedures and robotic surgical methods
• telecare and remote patient monitoring
• tele-education and clinical training
• evaluation and benefits of telehealth
• web services for telehealth
• mobile telehealth and wireless applications
• telehealth software and systems
• telehealth technologies and methodologies
• telehealth for remote areas
• telehealth in emerging countries
• telehealth policy and governance
• international trends and perspectives for telehealth

Original unpublished contributions in all fields of Telehealth (and closely related areas of eHealth) are invited. These may be offered as Full Papers (maximum 8 pages or approx 4000 words, not previously published) subject to expert peer review by an international program committee of technical experts, or as extended abstract Short Papers (maximum 2 pages or approx 1000 words) also subject to peerl review. Full Papers will appear in a commercially published and indexed monograph or may be considered for invited journal publication. Short Papers will appear in proceedings to be distributed to delegates at the event.

Submissions must contain a clear statement of aims, methods, results and conclusions for the work reported. Papers will be judged on originality, significance, technical quality, relevance to the conference, and presentation. Submission of a Full Paper or Short Paper will imply an undertaking that, should it be accepted, at least one author will register and attend the conference to present the work. Submissions should be made by following the instructions on the conference website, using the style guide provided.

Submission of Full and Short Papers: Friday 28 July 2012
Notification of acceptance to authors: Friday 25 August 2012
Camera-ready copy for proceedings: Friday 8 September 2012
Author & Early-bird registration deadline: Friday 8 September 2012

The conference will offer a limited number of half-day Workshops, for presentation of “work-in-progress” on thematically related sets of current Telehealth projects, and half-day Tutorials, for experts to provide concentrated overviews on topics of contemporary interest. These associated events will be available to delegates at very modest fees. Persons interested in offering to organise either a Workshop or a Tutorial should e-mail a 1 page summary of their proposal (including details of coverage, and names and affiliations of any intended presenters) to the organisers by the above Submission date. Other satellite events may be organised on the first day.

General Co-Chairs: Prof Anthony Maeder, University of Western Sydney & Prof Mohamed Khadra, University of Sydney
Program Co-Chairs: A/Prof Anthony Smith, University of Queensland & Dr Robert Eikelboom, University of Western Australia
Organising Co-Chairs: Dr Laurie Wilson, CSIRO ICT Centre & Dr David Allen, Quality Occupational Health

More Information: http://www.aths.org.au/GT2012/

Call for Papers: Third International Conference on Global Trends in Biomedical Informatics, Research Education and Globalization

Organized by the Department of Health Informatics, School of Health Related Professions, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)

It is our great pleasure to invite you to participate in the Third International Conference on Global Trends in Biomedical Informatics, Research Education and Globalization which will take place on November 15th, 2012 in Newark, NJ, USA.

This conference will provide a unique opportunity for disseminating the latest advances, applications and future trends in the area of Biomedical Informatics. The conference will meet the diverse interests of the delegates - from conceptual, theoretical, practical applications to commercialization. It will be the center of action for health informatics professionals to interact with their peers, meet leaders in the field, learn about new products, and see demonstrations from top healthcare systems and services vendors.

We are inviting original, unpublished research manuscripts in the following areas of interest, but not limited to

Electronic Health Records and Meaningful Use
Healthcare Outcomes Research
Personalized Medicine, Genetic Testing & Biomarkers
Interoperability and Standards in Healthcare
Public Health Informatics, GIS Applications, Disease Mapping & Surveillance
Clinical Informatics including Decision Support & Intelligent Systems
Healthcare Marketing and Outsourcing
Molecular Imaging & Nanomedicine
Privacy, Security and Confidentiality
Healthcare System Intrusion including Bio- and Cyber-Terrorism
Healthcare Disparities Research
Drug Discovery and Clinical Trials
Bio-computations
Nursing Informatics
Modelling and Simulation in Biomedical Research.
Translational Research in Healthcare including Bioinformatics Applications
Controlled Medical Terminologies & Ontologies
Healthcare Quality Research
Intelligent Systems
Mobile devices in Health care
Biomedical Instrumentation, Devices and Signal processing
Telemedicine Applications including Mobile Devices, Health Information Exchange & Service Oriented Architecture for Healthcare

Selected papers will be submitted for publication in the

International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications
International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics
International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Consumer Health Informatics
International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Healthcare Informatics

Highlights of the Conference

State-of-the-Art Overviews by Renowned Experts
Presentation of Scientific and Application Papers
Panel Discussions Exploring Critical Issues of the Day
Demonstrations of Advanced Health Informatics Systems
In-depth Tutorial Sessions in Current State of Art Biomedical Informatics by Eminent Speakers

We are looking forward for your participation to make this event a grand success

Important Deadlines:

Manuscript Submission: September 1, 2012
Decision on Paper Acceptance: September 30, 2012
Submission of Final Manuscript: October 30, 2012

CONTACT DETAILS
Dr. Syed Haque
Chair & Program Director

Ms. Yvonne Rolley
Conference Coordinator
Department of Health Informatics
UMDNJ-School of Health Related Professions
65 Bergen Street, Rm.350
Newark, NJ 07107-3001
Phone: 973 972 6871, Fax: 973 972 8540

Call for Papers: Fifth International Symposium on Semantic Mining in Biomedicine (SMBM 2012)

September 3rd and 4th, Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

SMBM 2012 aims to bring together researchers from text and data mining in biomedicine, medical, bio- and chemoinformatics, and researchers active in biomedical ontology design and engineering, and the Semantic Web. The combined research helps to promote full integration of data and factual content from large text collections, biological databases, ontological and terminological resources, and from the Web.

However, many challenges have yet to be met to achieve this ambitious goal. Significant advances have been made and many working systems for tasks ranging from semantics driven literature analysis to cross-resource data analysis and open linked data on the web have been suggested and deployed. Where do we stand and how do we advance toward fully integrated systems combining the different solutions and data sources?

We are inviting papers from a full range of topics (see below), emphasizing in particular work on methods deployed in a production-like research environment, user-facing applications of text mining technology, the integration of text with domain resources such as content from reference databases (e.g., UniProt, EntrezGene, OMIM) and semantic resources such as GO, UMLS etc. We also welcome contributions from across the biomedical domains, including genomics, translational medicine, clinical practice, and public health.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Development and use of biomedical semantic resources

Terminology and ontology development for biomedical information systems including terminology evolution

Integration of text and data mining in the biomedical domain

(Semantic) Web mining of biomedical information

Text mining, information extraction, and information retrieval for the biomedical domain

Evaluation techniques and standards for text mining solutions

Annotation schemes for biomedical corpora

Text mining for resource building, e.g. ontologies, and resource enrichment, e.g., biomedical databases

Representation and discovery of biomedical domain knowledge

Image/caption processing in relation to content extraction

Domain-specific reasoning processes, e.g., to infer non-explicit information, validation (trust-worthiness, believability, safety) of extracted information

Integration of text mining in biological database curation workflows

All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings that will be available online. We invite three categories of papers: full research papers, short papers and system papers. Research papers will be given an oral presentation, short papers a poster presentation, and systems papers will be presented in systems demonstration sessions. System papers should describe an implemented system related to a topic of interest that the authors will demonstrate live during the symposium. The final modality of presentation will be decided by the organizing committee.

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version for publication in a special issue of an open-access journal (details to be announced).

Submissions should follow the ACL instructions for authors, with a maximal limit of seven (7) pages (plus one optional page for references). The recommended length for system papers and poster submissions is four (4) pages. Manuscripts will be submitted electronically as PDF files. Reviewing will be double-blind, and submissions should therefore NOT contain author names or other obviously identifying information.

SMBM 2012 is the follow-up to to the successful series:

SMBM 2005 (EBI, U.K.), SMBM 2006 (University of Jena, Germany), SMBM 2008 (University of Turku, Finland) and SMBM 2010 (EBI, U.K). A parallel event (LBM: The International Symposium on Languages in Biology and Medicine) has been held in 2005 (KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea), 2007 (Matrix, Biopolis, Singapore), 2009 (Jeju Island, South Korea) and 2011 (NTU, Singapore).

Important dates
Paper submission deadline: June 8th 2012
Notification of acceptance: July 1st 2012
Symposium dates: September 3-4th 2012

Call for Papers: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2012 Fall Symposium on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Discovery in Biomedical Text

November 2-4, 2012 Arlington, Virginia

Submission Deadline: 25 May 2012

The amount of biological and medical literature has grown exponentially within the last decade. This data may be in the form of journal citations in PubMed, in the form of clinical summaries in healthcare institutions or in the form of blogs and user comments that express personal opinions on the different healthcare topics such as drug adverse effects or disease treatments. This material, be it expressed by researchers, medical professionals or medical care receivers, is of significant importance in terms of the wealth of information that it possesses. However, it is only valuable if efficient and reliable ways of accessing and analyzing that information are available.

In this symposium we would like to address novel research on computational techniques for information retrieval and knowledge discovery from biomedical and clinical texts, with a focus on machine learning and/or natural language processing, as well as novel applications of existing techniques to the open problems in text processing in biomedical domain. We will invite several speakers from the biomedical text processing community who will present current research problems in this field, and we will invite contributed talks on novel learning approaches that can improve the analysis and retrieval of biological and medical information.

We solicit two types of submissions to the symposium:

1. Contributed talks and/or posters
We invite submissions that address new algorithmic and methodological contributions to the spectrum of problems in biomedical text analysis, where textual resources can include semi-structured and unstructured biomedical text, clinical text, social media and any other healthcare related text media.

2. Open problems
For open problems, we request the authors to submit a one page description that motivates and explains an existing open problem in text analysis and information retrieval in biomedical domain. The main goal here is to foster active discussion.

Papers for the symposium will be collected and made into an AAAI technical report, which will be distributed to attendees on CD and included in the AAAI Digital Library. The issuance of technical report allows the work to be cited.

IMPORTANT DATES
Paper Submission Deadline: May 25, 2012

Notification of acceptance: June 22, 2012

Camera-ready papers : September 7, 2012

AAAI 2012 Fall Symposium: November 2-4, 2012

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to direct your questions to
Rezarta.Islamaj@nih.gov or Lana.Yeganova@nih.gov

AAAI 2012 Fall Symposium Organizers:
Lana Yeganova, PhD, Staff Scientist, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Rezarta Islamaj Dogan, PhD, Research Fellow, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Vahan Grigoryan, PhD, Associate, Cloud Analytics Group, Booz Allen Hamilton.

Mark Dredze, PhD, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Computer Science and the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, Johns Hopkins University.

Call for Abstracts: Advances in eHealth 2012 Workshop

The workshop provides a forum for eHealth researchers from multiple disciplines to share current advances and research on increasing the effectiveness and adoption of technology in healthcare in the coming decade. This ranges from the use of sensor devices, human-computer interfaces, to cloud based medical record systems in order to provide radically new solutions for helping patients. At the same time medical informatics and large scale genomics data analysis are playing major role in clarifying the opportunities for personalized medicine applications. Biobanks as the back end of data-driven biomedical science open the possibilities for studying genetic and environmental influences over time, accelerating the pace of biomedical research. On other hand, ongoing efforts toward a global sharing of digital healthcare data will pave the way to maximize the potential for knowledge discovery.

These advances require structural changes as well as technological development. Society is facing an increase in chronic degenerative diseases that require monitoring and long-term patient management, the growing desire of patients to be treated in a family environment in order to protect their social ties, and, finally, a need to reduce costs. These factors necessitate a new strategic orientation in services and infrastructures for supporting these services. Both the shift towards networked sensors and cloud-based systems also require new security concepts to facilitate secure and effective use of these systems.

We are looking for papers that address medium to large-scale and medium to long-term challenges for eHealth and potential solutions.

The workshop is part of the eScience2012 conference (http://www.ci.uchicago.edu/escience2012), 8-12 October 2012, Chicago, USA.

Workshop twitter hashtag: #aeh2012

Topics of interest include but not limited to:

Medical Simulations
Computing Infrastructures for eHealth
Data Storage, Transfer, and Indexing Systems for eHealth Applications
Security & Privacy for eHealth
HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) for eHealth
User Studies of eHealth Systems
Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems and Applications
Bio-banking and eHealth
Data Mining and Applications for Personalized Medicine

Workshop format
The workshop will include invited speakers, paper presentation sessions and a tentative panel discussion.

Organizing Committee
Rossen Apostolov, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
rossen@kth.se
Matthew Smith, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany
smith@dcsec.uni-hannover.de
Tristan Glatard, CREATIS, Medical Imaging Research Center, Lyon, France
tristan.glatard@creatis.insa-lyon.fr

Important dates
Abstract submission: 4 July 2012
Paper submission: 11 July 2012
Paper author notification: 22 August 2012
Camera-ready papers due: 10 September 2012
Conference: 8-12 October 2012

Submission guidelines
Authors are invited to submit papers with unpublished, original work of not more than 8 pages of double column text using single spaced 10 point size on 8.5 x 11 inch pages, as per IEEE 8.5 x 11 manuscript guidelines. (Up to 2 additional pages may be purchased for US$150/page). Templates are available from http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html.

Authors should submit a PDF file that will print on a PostScript printer to https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aeh2012

(Note that paper submitters also must submit an abstract in advance of the paper deadline. This should be done through the same site where papers are submitted.)

It is a requirement that at least one author of each accepted paper attend the conference.