PUTHSDI 2015 - First International Workshop on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Techniques for Healthcare Service Delivery Improvement

This workshop provides a premier interdisciplinary forum for leading international healthcare delivery researchers, managers, clinicians, operations specialists, practitioners, HCI specialists, Human Factors experts, industrial designers, and developers to present and discuss key issues and methods to do with the incorporation of ubiquitous and pervasive computing for healthcare service improvement. This includes the design, development, deployment, and impacts of ubiquitous and pervasive computing technologies to better understand how healthcare providers manage their time, task load, communication, and other factors in order to improve service delivery.
Workshop to be held at UbiComp 2015 in Osaka, Japan.
Workshop date: Tuesday 8th September, 2015
Main conference: 9th ? 11th September, 2015.
Topic and Rationale
There is an urgent need for, and evidence of, the application of domain-specific pervasive and ubiquitous techniques to support social and collaborative innovations to improve healthcare service delivery. By techniques here we mean not only the introduction of technologies (e.g. sensors) (e.g. see [4]), but also the computational algorithms to derive meaning from the data (e.g. see [1]), the data management practices, and the organisational practice changes affected by methods aimed to make the delivery of healthcare more efficient and personalised through improved monitoring and computational organising of resources and staff (e.g. see [2,3,5]). For instance the introduction of ubiquitous access to information from hand held devices deployed in hospital wards has considerable consequences upon cognitive workload and how tasks are assigned and performed, as well as upon public perception. Another example relates to understanding impacts on hospital systems from changes to the navigational aids, owing to ubiquitous indoor positioning. A further example involves changes to the usage of resources in hospitals owing to the electronic tagging of equipment, personnel, and patients.
The diversity of issues surrounding research using pervasive and ubiquitous technologies with respect to healthcare service delivery is a large and relatively unchartered barrier. Whilst patient orientated and home care issues are relatively well explored within the Ubicomp community, far less is known about the sensitivities surrounding such techniques for healthcare delivery involving staff (including doctors, nurses, carers and managers). Nor are the effects well known of the introduction of pervasive and ubiquitous technologies upon the public image of large scale healthcare environments such as hospitals. Issues arising from the implementation and long term use of such technologies in these complex socio-technical systems and their impact on service delivery and improvement form the basis of this workshop.
This workshop focuses on bringing to the fore the key challenges, methods, devices, systems and research directions to employ pervasive and ubiquitous technologies for studying and improving practice within nursing, medicine, and healthcare delivery. The workshop includes multidisciplinary discussions and debates related to theoretical and experimental research, and practical experience with respect to how healthcare delivery is impacted by the introduction of advances in wireless, connected, and mobile technologies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This workshop is made possible through the generous support and the Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute, EPSRC grant EP/G065802/1, and the Health Foundation UK (award number 7382).