Call for Papers

International Workshop on Scaling-Up Healthcare with Conversational Agents – Scale-IT-up 2021

– Submission deadline: December 6, 2020
– Notification of acceptance: December 14, 2020
– Camera-ready papers due: December 22, 2020

The workshop is part of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies – BIOSTEC 2021, 11 – 13 February 2021. Further information for authors (submission system, manuscript instructions, etc.) is available via the workshop’s website.

Scope
Healthcare delivery undergoes a rapid change from traditional processes towards the use of digital health interventions and personalized medicine. On the one side, hospitals and health care providers introduce hospital information systems, electronic health records and telemedicine solutions for more efficient workflows within and beyond institutions. On the other side, patients may choose between a wide range of digital health applications provided by wearables and mobile phone applications supporting their self-management, health and well-being. A particular solution to support the patient, given the lack of always available caregivers or in scenarios where their absence is not avoidable or even desired (see the case of far-distance support in a pandemic situation), are conversational agents (also known as relational agents, virtual humans or chatbots). Conversational agents are computer programs that imitate the interaction with humans and provide guidance or coaching for patients on rule- or machine learning-based system. However, the question of how to sustainably implement, adopt and diffuse digital health solutions amplified with conversational agent functionalities is not sufficiently solved yet. Our workshop seeks for submissions dealing with this question. We welcome research and theory papers as well as case studies and best practice examples.

Topics
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Innovative and implemented (telemedical) care models to mitigate the demographic impact on the health care system
• Implementation strategies or models for localizing and tailoring of digital health solutions
• Quality management in integrated healthcare networks and for digitally supported care models
• Dissemination and adoption strategies for digital innovations
• Transformation of traditional care processes by the use of information and communication technologies, e.g. successful intra- and interorganizational implementation of health information systems, electronic health records, or telemedicine/eHealth applications
• Health behavior change through the use of digital health interventions
• Digital Health at home – successfully putting individualized ambient assisted living solutions to use

Workshop Chairs

• Dr. Hannes Schlieter, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• Dr. Kai Gand, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, ETH Zurich & HSG, Switzerland

Program Committee

• Jacqueline Mair, PhD, Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore
• Alicia Salamanca, PhD, Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore
• Gisbert Teepe, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
• Lorenz Harst, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• Prof. Anthony Maeder, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
• Lena Otto, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• Lua Perimal-Lewis, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
• Peggy Richter, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• Patrick Timpel, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• Diane Whitehouse, EHTEL, Belgium
• Basian Wollschlaeger, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany