Annals of Information Systems (published by Springer)
Special Issue on mHealth Ecosystems

Guest Editors:

Professor Dionysios-Dimitrios Koutsouris, National Technical University of Athens, Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Athens, Greece
E-mail: dkoutsou@biomed.ntua.gr

Dr. Athina Lazakidou, Assistant Professor of Health Informatics, University of Peloponnese, Faculty of Human Movement and Quality of Life Sciences, Department of Nursing, Sparta, Greece
E-mail: lazakid@uop.gr

Dr. Dimitra Iliopoulou, Researcher, National Technical University of Athens,
Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Athens, Greece
Email: dilio@biomed.ntua.gr



This upcoming book will cover cutting edge research topics of utmost real-world importance in the specific domain of Mobile Health Ecosystems, and will present studies from leading researchers and practitioners in the field. The ecosystems enable healthcare and social assistance to be transformed and give more power to people regarding their health.

Mobile Health (mHealth) refers to practice of offering health services and health-realted information using mobile devices such as phones, tablets, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and wireless infrastructure. This fast emerging subdomain of digital health technology has far reaching implications for the entire healthcare ecosystem.

For society as a whole, a healthier citizenry reduces pressure on overburdened hospitals, clinics, and medical professionals. It also reduces inequalities based on gender, income, or geography, and means that a greater proportion of the population can be employed, which increases gross domestic product, generates higher incomes for citizens, and increases tax revenues. This lowers demand for the services provided through public safety nets, charities, and non-governmental organizations. In short, an effective, accessible healthcare system is a prerequisite for economic growth and has clear benefits across society.

Ecosystems of suppliers are emerging to share the risks — and the potential benefits. Such ecosystems of suppliers also emerge because complex licensing and regulatory structures may make it challenging or even impossible for technology vendors to deliver a complete mHealth solution themselves. This means there are lots of different players, with different financial interests in business plans for mHealth, and the flows between them vary significantly from market to market and from application to application.

Mobile health technology will emerge as a key factor in affecting a fundamental transition of healthcare from a physician-centric, reactive approach to person-centric, proactive and preventive model. And there is an urgent need to educate various stakeholders of healthcare ecosystem from physicians and patients to organisations and governments to adapt to this disruptive paradigm shift. Making an ecosystem grow in mHealth is a real opportunity to offer better quality healthcare at a lower cost. The fundamental principle of ecosystems is simple: they enhance the participation of all health agents, and also those in the area of well-being and social healthcare in a specific geographic area. These stakeholders reach agreements with other collaborating partners to set up mHealth solutions and thereby face the challenges of assistance.

This special issue will present studies from leading researchers and practitioners focusing on the current challenges, directions, trends and opportunities associated with healthcare delivery systems and their supporting wireless and mobile health technologies.


Topics of Interest (include but are not limited)

• Key trends in the mHealth ecosystem.
• Adoption of cloud based mHealth services.
• Socio-economic impact of mHealth.
• Self management of health and disease: citizen engagement and mHealth.
• Wireless-enabled remote patient monitoring solutions.
• Short and long-term mHealth strategy considerations.
• Mobile health regulation and security.
• The role of standards and interoperability to the success of mHealth into the mobile ecosystem.
• The development of a multi-stakeholder ecosystem (of health and care professionals, patients, nutrition - and pharmaceutical industries, public healthcare authorities, health IT, mHealth actors, health insurers and regulators, etc…) to develop a 'co-production of health' business model.
• The value of mHealth and wireless solutions in integrated health systems.
• Digital health solutions (such as smart alert systems) that can reduce the high costs of emergency medical care interventions.
• Mobile health devices that monitor medication schedule: mHealth solutions that can be used to increase treatment compliance.
• Knowledge management and decision support systems to analyze and compile the data collected by applications on individuals’ health and activities in order to be used by the actors of the ecosystems.
• Guidance for patients, caregivers, families and patients' social environment on chronic disease management supported by mHealth.



Important Dates

• Deadline for manuscripts: 10th January 2015
• Notification of authors: 10th February 2015
• Revision due: 10th March 2015
• Publication Date: April-May 2015


Review Process

Each manuscript has to comply with the journal’s typing instructions and will be peer-reviewed according to the standards of an esteemed international journal. Reflecting the theme of the special issue, the quality and originality of the contribution will serve as major acceptance criteria for each submission. To enable a timely publication of the special issue, papers which are unequivocally out of scope will be rejected without detailed review.



Submission Instructions

Manuscripts should be submitted in .pdf format via e-mail to lazakid@uop.gr or dkoutsou@biomed.ntua.gr or dilio@biomed.ntua.gr. Papers should provide a cover page containing paper title, authors – including indication of corresponding author – and a short statement of contribution (max. 100 words). The cover page can be submitted within the same .doc file as the main text. The manuscript must be typewritten in English and 1.5 spaced throughout. Papers should not exceed 6,000 words including abstract and references.


Information about Annals of Information Systems

Annals of Information Systems Series
Published by Springer
Guest Editors: Dionysios-Dimitrios Koutsouris, Athina Lazakidou, Dimitra Iliopoulou
ISSN: 1934-3221

Annals of Information Systems comprises serialized volumes that address a specialized topic or a theme. Annals of Information Systems publishes peer reviewed works in the analytical, technical as well as the organizational side of information systems. Annals of Information Systems focuses on high quality scholarly publications. The numbered volumes are guest-edited by experts in a specific domain. Some volumes may be based upon refereed papers from selected conferences. Annals of Information Systems volumes are available as individual books as well as a serialized collection. Annals of Information Systems is allied with the "Integrated Series in Information Systems".


Contact Info

Professor Dionysios-Dimitrios Koutsouris
Director of Biomedical Engineering Laboratory
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
National Technical University of Athens
GR-15780, Zografou, Athens, GREECE
E-mail: dkoutsou@biomed.ntua.gr

Dr. Athina Lazakidou
Assistant Professor of Health Informatics
University of Peloponnese
Faculty of Human Movement and Quality of Life
Department of Nursing
Orthias Artemidos & Plateon
GR-23100, Sparta, GREECE
E-mail: lazakid@uop.gr

Dr. Dimitra Iliopoulou
Researcher at Biomedical Engineering Laboratory
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
National Technical University of Athens
GR-15780, Zografou, Athens, GREECE
E-mail: dilio@biomed.ntua.gr



Guest Editors Biographies

Prof. Dimitris Koutsouris was born in Serres, Greece in 1955. He received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering in 1978 (Greece), DEA in Biomechanics in 1979 (France), Doctorat in Genie Biologie Medicale (France), Doctorat d' Etat in Biomedical Engineering 1984 (France). Since 1986 he was research associate on the USC (Los Angeles), Renè Dèscartes (Paris) and Assoc. Professor at the Dept. of Electrical & Computers Engineering of National Technical University of Athens. He is currently Professor and Head of the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory. He has published over 150 research articles and book chapters and more than 350 peer reviewed conference communications. He has been the former elected president of the Hellenic Society of Biomedical Technology, HL7 Hellas and Chairman at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prof. D. Koutsouris has been principal investigator in more than 100 European and National Research programs, especially in the field of Telematics and Informatics in Healthcare. His work has received more than 1900 citations.

Dr. Athina Lazakidou currently works at the University of Peloponnese, Department of Nursing in Greece as Assistant Professor of Health Informatics. She is the Director of the Applied Health Informatics Laboratory at the Department of Nursing. She did her undergraduate studies at the Athens University of Economics and Business (Greece) and received her BSc in Computer Science in 1996. In 2000, she received her Ph.D in Medical Informatics from the Department of Medical Informatics, University Hospital Benjamin Franklin at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. She worked as a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus (2000-2002) and at the Department of Nursing at the University of Athens (2002-2007). She is also an internationally known expert in the field of computer applications in health care and biomedicine, with six books and numerous papers to her credit. She was also Editor of the “Handbook of Research on Informatics in Healthcare and Biomedicine” and “Handbook of Research on Distributed Medical Informatics and E-Health”, the best authoritative reference sources for information on the newest trends and breakthroughs in computer applications applied to health care and biomedicine. Her research interests include health informatics, databases, clinical decision support systems, health economics and information systems, electronic medical record systems, collaborative systems, web-based applications in health care and other areas.

Dr. Dimitra Iliopoulou graduated from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at NTUA (Diploma and PhD) and is a researcher associate of the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory. Her research involves disease modelling (mainly diabetes mellitus and cervical cancer) and bioinformatics focusing on self-adaptive treatment planning, large data manipulation and systems interoperability. She is a member of the IEEE and the Greek Society of Biomedical Technology. She has published over 20 scientific papers and more than 15 papers in conference proceedings. She has worked in IT and Telecommunications in several companies. She has been active in various research projects related to health.