Message from the UbiHealth 2009 Workshop Chairs

Ubiquitous computing has enormously empowered health-related activities with the maturation of the Internet and wireless communications, and with the ubiquity of microchips in computers, appliances, and sensors. Embedded software is now very pervasive; and its use in medical devices is of heightened interest since a failure or malfunction may result in the loss of human lives. There are also important issues related to how to manage healthcare information and devices. The workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners from the healthcare, medicine, medical informatics, and management fields to share their experiences with ubiquitous computing in healthcare. It provides a stimulating forum for discussing new breakthroughs and challenges, and for presenting new ideas, applications, and experiences in this exciting and rapidly changing field. It is anticipated that the workshop will foster collaborative efforts among practitioners and academicians, accelerate knowledge discovery, and reduce the costs of healthcare. We received many high-quality papers and eventually we accepted only 26% of them. The final decisions were made after a high-quality review process in which each paper received at least three reviews (four reviews in many cases). Sincere appreciation goes to all people contributing to the quality and success of this workshop. First, we thank all authors who submitted their papers for their quality research works. We also thank the Program Committee members and the additional reviewers who contributed their valuable time and expertise to provide professional reviews under a very tight schedule. Finally, we thank the IEEE Computer Society for its support of this workshop.