Presentation:

Infrastructures are at the heart of healthcare's ongoing digital transformation. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), social assistive robotics (SAR), and the Internet of Things (IoT) accelerate transformation. At the same time, the growing availability of patient-oriented health applications contributes to patients’ more active involvement in their care and well-being.

Generating personal health data is simultaneously a key outcome, a drive, and a crucial building block of healthcare digitalization. More personal health data are collected in digital form than ever before. These innovations empower patients to take charge of their health through connected devices (ie, smartphones, smartwatches), enabling self-reporting, condition and activity monitoring, and wellness tracking. At the same time, they push more work onto patients.

Demographic change with the increase in chronic diseases and co-morbidity, the growing shortage of skilled workers in nursing and medicine, and the advancing digitalization in diagnosis and therapy are pressing issues for which we seek solutions. Against the backdrop of economic constraints (e.g., hospital closures, shortage of doctors, especially in rural areas, billing for services) and the advent of more technical support options (e.g., artificial intelligence in diagnosis, telemedicine), there is a high demand for meaningful digital and socio-technical forms of healthcare support for inter-organizational, cross-sector and integrated care chains.

infraHEALTH, as a single-track conference, has a longstanding interest in empirical, conceptual, theoretical, and technical contributions and has a tradition of innovation and inclusiveness.

Authors are invited to submit their work to infraHEALTH 2025 addressing topics that include, but are not limited to:

• Opportunities and challenges in the design and development of personal health data infrastructures
• Good and bad practices in designing and using personal-health data infrastructures
• Personal data flows in connected devices and context-related use of technologies
• Digitalization of health service delivery, e.g., caring at home, robotics, AI, conversational agents, exergames, digital twins
• Digital support for informal caregivers, for instance, for information, access to professionals or reaching out to peers or supporting associations
• Digital support for ad hoc needed emergencies, for example, self-supporting older adults living at home suddenly in need of health services
• Digital support for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, critical perspectives on novel pandemic-related data infrastructures
• Digital infrastructures that are instantiated when needed but otherwise non-intrusive or in the background awaiting their need
• Integration of healthcare and data sharing across organizational units, professions, etc.
• Question of digitalization – the risks and implications of depriving individuals of offline choices
• Digital solutions to issues of privacy and security
• Support for self-management of health through digital infrastructures
• Digital access to complex health-related information by non-expert citizens
• Digital infrastructures for the visualization of healthcare data
• Emotional and social intelligence in infrastructures and healthcare
• Responsible use of AI-enabled decision-making in healthcare and welfare services
• New competencies and learning for patients and health professionals

Important Deadlines:

• Paper submissions (up to 10 pages, excluding references): 18 April 2025
• Poster and Demo submissions (up to 6 pages, excluding references): 31 May 2025

All submissions will undergo a single-blind review by at least two reviewers. Accepted papers will be published in EUSSET’s Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies and available in the EUSSET Digital Library (https://dl.eusset.eu/).

Join us in the vibrant city of Troyes, France, where the Université de Technologie de Troyes and the University of Siegen come together to co-organize an exciting conference with the support of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET - www.eusset.eu). This conference offers a unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, and contribute to cutting-edge discussions on the future of healthcare infrastructures.

We look forward to welcoming you to an inspiring and innovative conference in Troyes!

Conference website: https://infrahealth.eusset.eu/2025/