The two-volume set LNAI 8856 and LNAI 8857 constitutes the proceedings of the 13th Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2014, held in Tuxtla, Mexico, in November 2014. The total of 87 papers plus 1 invited talk presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 348 submissions. The first volume deals with advances in human-inspired computing and its applications. It contains 44 papers structured into seven sections: natural language processing, natural language processing applications, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, and social network applications, computer vision, image processing, logic, reasoning, and multi-agent systems, and intelligent tutoring systems. The second volume deals with advances in nature-inspired computation and machine learning and contains also 44 papers structured into eight sections: genetic and evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, machine learning, machine learning applications to audio and text, data mining, fuzzy logic, robotics, planning, and scheduling, and biomedical applications.

Conducting fieldwork for investigating technology use in healthcare is a challenging undertaking, and yet there is little in the way of community support and guidance for conducting these studies. There is a need for better knowledge sharing and resources to facilitate learning. This is the second of two volumes designed as a collective graduate guidebook for conducting fieldwork in healthcare. This volume brings together thematic chapters that draw out issues and lessons learned from practical experience. Researchers who have first-hand experience of conducting healthcare fieldwork collaborated to write these chapters. This volume contains insights, tips, and tricks from studies in clinical and non-clinical environments, from hospital to home. This volume starts with an introduction to the ethics and governance procedures a researcher might encounter when conducting fieldwork in this sensitive study area. Subsequent chapters address specific aspects of conducting situated healthcare research. Chapters on readying the researcher and relationships in the medical domain break down some of the complex social aspects of this type of research. They are followed by chapters on the practicalities of collecting data and implementing interventions, which focus on domain-specific issues that may arise. Finally, we close the volume by discussing the management of impact in healthcare fieldwork. The guidance contained in these chapters enables new researchers to form their project plans and also their contingency plans in this complex and challenging domain. For more experienced researchers, it offers advice and support through familiar stories and experiences. For supervisors and teachers, it offers a source of reference and debate. Together with the first volume, Fieldwork for Healthcare: Case Studies Investigating Human Factors in Computing systems, these books provide a substantive resource on how to conduct fieldwork in healthcare. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Ethics, Governance, and Patient and Public Involvement in Healthcare / Readying the Researcher for Fieldwork in Healthcare / Establishing and Maintaining Relationships in Healthcare Fields / Practicalities of Data Collection in Healthcare Fieldwork / Healthcare Intervention Studies "In the Wild" / Impact of Fieldwork in Healthcare: Understanding Impact on Researchers, Research, Practice, and Beyond / References / Biographies

The two-volume set LNAI 8856 and LNAI 8857 constitutes the proceedings of the 13th Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2014, held in Tuxtla, Mexico, in November 2014. The total of 87 papers plus 1 invited talk presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 348 submissions. The first volume deals with advances in human-inspired computing and its applications. It contains 44 papers structured into seven sections: natural language processing, natural language processing applications, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, and social network applications, computer vision, image processing, logic, reasoning, and multi-agent systems, and intelligent tutoring systems. The second volume deals with advances in nature-inspired computation and machine learning and contains also 44 papers structured into eight sections: genetic and evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, machine learning, machine learning applications to audio and text, data mining, fuzzy logic, robotics, planning, and scheduling, and biomedical applications.

This book constitutes revised post-proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Pervasive Computing Paradigms for Mental Health, MindCare 2014, held in Tokyo, Japan, in May 2014. The 11 full and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions for inclusion in the proceedings. The papers are organized in topical sections on recognition and assessment, mental health management, improving communication, depression, and self-applied treatments.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2013, held in Barcelona, Spain, in February 2013. The 28 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 392 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics and are organized in four general topical sections on biomedical electronics and devices; bioinformatics models, methods and algorithms; bio-inspired systems and signal processing; health informatics.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Perspectives in Business Informatics Research, BIR 2014, held in Lund, Sweden, in September 2014. Overall, 71 submissions were rigorously reviewed by 55 members of the Program Committee representing 22 countries. As a result, 27 full papers have been selected for publication in this volume. The papers cover many aspects of business information research and have been organized in topical sections on: business, people, and systems; business and information systems development; and contextualized evaluation of business informatics.

This volume presents the Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (MBEC2014), held in Dubrovnik September 7 - 11, 2014. The general theme of MBEC 2014 is "Towards new horizons in biomedical engineering" The scientific discussions in these conference proceedings include the following themes: - Biomedical Signal Processing - Biomedical Imaging and Image Processing - Biosensors and Bioinstrumentation - Bio-Micro/Nano Technologies - Biomaterials - Biomechanics, Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery - Cardiovascular, Respiratory and Endocrine Systems Engineering - Neural and Rehabilitation Engineering - Molecular, Cellular and Tissue Engineering - Bioinformatics and Computational Biology - Clinical Engineering and Health Technology Assessment - Health Informatics, E-Health and Telemedicine - Biomedical Engineering Education

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Formal Methods in Macro-Biology, FMMB 2014, held in Noumea, New Caledonia, in September 2014. The 7 revised full and 3 short papers presented together with 7 invited presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. The scientific program consists of papers on a wide variety of topics, including ecological systems, medical applications, logical frameworks, and discrete continuous and hybrid models for the analysis of biological systems at macroscopic levels.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2014, held in Boston, MA, USA, in August 2014. The 14 full and 24 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 78 submissions. In addition, the volume includes 25 demo and poster papers which were on display during the conference. The papers cover many aspects of intelligent virtual agent theory and application with a special focus on their use in healthcare.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society, WIS 2014, held in Turku, Finland, in September 2014. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. The core topic is livability and quality of (urban) living with safety and security. The papers address topics such as secure and equal use of information resources, safe and secure work environments and education institutions, cyberaggression and cybersecurity as well as impact of culture on urban safety and security.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Data Integration in the Life Sciences, DILS 2014, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in July 2014. The 9 revised full papers and the 5 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. The papers cover a range of important topics such as data integration platforms and applications; biodiversity data management; ontologies and visualization; linked data and query processing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management 2014, held as part of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2014, held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece in June 2014, jointly with 13 other thematically conferences. The total of 1476 papers and 220 posters presented at the HCII 2014 conferences were carefully reviewed and selected from 4766 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of Human-Computer Interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The 65 papers included in this volume are organized in topical sections on modeling posture and motion; anthropometry, design and ergonomics; ergonomics and human modeling in work and everyday life environments; advances in healthcare; rehabilitation applications; risk, safety and emergency.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computational Modeling of Objects Presented in Images, CompIMAGE 2014, held in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in September 2014. The 29 revised full papers presented together with 10 short papers and 6 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers cover the following topics: medical treatment, imaging and analysis; image registration, denoising and feature identification; image segmentation; shape analysis, meshing and graphs; medical image processing and simulations; image recognition, reconstruction and predictive modeling; image-based modeling and simulations; and computer vision and data-driven investigations.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference for Smart Health, ICSH 2014, held in Beijing, China, in July 2014. The 21 papers presented together with 4 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on information sharing, integrating and extraction; health data analysis and management; clinical and medical data mining; and clinical practice and medical monitoring.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Processing in Computer-Assisted Interventions, IPCAI 2014, held in Fukuoka, Japan, on June 28, 2014. The 28 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on planning, simulation, patient specific models for computer assisted interventions, medical robotics and surgical navigation, interventional imaging and advanced intra-op visualization, cognition, modeling and context awareness, clinical applications, systems, software, and validation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2014, held in Padua, Italy, in May 2014. The 27 revised full papers and 12 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. In addition to the themes of persuasive technology dealt with in the previous editions of the conference, this edition highlighted a special theme, i.e. persuasive, motivating, empowering videogames.

New computerized approaches to various problems have become critically important in healthcare. Computer assisted diagnosis has been extended towards a support of the clinical treatment. Mathematical information analysis, computer applications together with medical equipment and instruments have become standard tools underpinning the current rapid progress with developing Computational Intelligence. We are witnessing a radical change as technologies have been integrated into systems that address the core of medicine, including patient care in ambulatory and in-patient setting, disease prevention, health promotion, rehabilitation and home care. Computer aided diagnosis and treatment systems increase the objectivity of the analysis and speed up the response to pathological changes.

This book presents a variety of state-of-the-art information technology and its applications to the networked environment to allow robust computerized approaches to be introduced throughout the healthcare enterprise. Patient's safety and shortening of the rehabilitation time requires a more rapid development of minimally invasive surgery supported by image navigation techniques. Home care, remote rehabilitation assistance, safety of the elderly requires new areas to be explored in telemedicine and telegeriatrics.

This book is a great reference tool for scientists who deal with problems of designing and implementing processing tools employed in systems that assist clinicians in patient diagnosis and treatment."

This book contains selected contributions from some of the most renowned researchers in the field of small-scale robotics, based in large part on invited presentations from the workshop "The Different Sizes of Small-Scale Robotics: from Nano-, to Millimeter-Sized Robotic Systems and Applications," which was held in conjunction with the conjunction with the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013), in May 2013 in Karlsruhe, Germany. With many potential applications in areas such as medicine, manufacturing or search and rescue, small-scale robotics represent a new emerging frontier in robotics research. The aim of this book is to provide an insight to ongoing research and future directions in this novel, continuously evolving field, which lies at the intersection of engineering, computer science, material science and biology.

New computerized approaches to various problems have become critically important in healthcare. Computer assisted diagnosis has been extended towards a support of the clinical treatment. Mathematical information analysis, computer applications have become standard tools underpinning the current rapid progress with developing Computational Intelligence. A computerized support in the analysis of patient information and implementation of a computer aided diagnosis and treatment systems, increases the objectivity of the analysis and speeds up the response to pathological changes.

This book presents a variety of state-of-the-art information technology and its applications to the networked environment to allow robust computerized approaches to be introduced throughout the healthcare enterprise. Image analysis and its application is the traditional part that deals with the problem of data processing, recognition and classification. Bioinformatics has become a dynamically developed field of computer assisted biological data analysis.

This book is a great reference tool for scientists who deal with problems of designing and implementing processing tools employed in systems that assist the radiologists and biologists in patient data analysis.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Biomedical Informatics and Technology, ACBIT 2013, held in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, in September 2013. The ??? revised full papers presented together with 14 keynotes and invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The papers address important problems in medicine, biology and health using image analysis, computer vision, pattern analysis and classification, information visualization, signal processing, control theory, information theory, statistical analysis, information fusion, numerical analysis, fractals and chaos, optimization, simulation and modeling, parallel computing, computational intelligence methods, machine learning, data mining, decision support systems, database integration and management, cognitive modeling, and applied linguistics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Information Science, HIS 2014, held in Shenzhen, China, in April 2014. The 29 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. They cover a wide range of topics in health information sciences and systems that support the health information management and health service delivery. They deal with medical/health/biomedicine information resources, such as patient medical records, devices and equipments, software and tools to capture, store, retrieve, process, analyse, and optimize the use of information in the health domain; data management, data mining, and knowledge discovery, all of which play a key role in the decision making, management of public health, examination of standards, privacy and security issues; computer visualization and artificial intelligence for computer-aided diagnosis; and development of new architectures and applications for health information systems.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the International Workshop on Clinical Image-Based Procedures, CLIP 2013, held in conjunction with MICCAI 2012 in Nagoya, Japan, in September 2013. The 19 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions. The workshop was a productive and exciting forum for the discussion and dissemination of clinically tested, state-of-the-art methods for image-based planning, monitoring and evaluation of medical procedures.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Medical Computer Vision, MCV 2013, held in Nagoya, Japan, in September 2013 in conjunction with the 16th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2013. The 7 revised full papers and 12 poster papers presented were selected from 25 submissions. They have been organized in topical sections on registration and visualization, segmentation, detection and localization, and features and retrieval. In addition, the volume contains two invited papers describing segmentation task and data set of the VISCERAL benchmark challenge.

Performing fieldwork in healthcare settings is significantly different from fieldwork in other domains and it presents unique challenges to researchers. Whilst results are reported in research papers, the details of how to actually perform these fieldwork studies are not. This is the first of two volumes designed as a collective graduate guidebook for conducting fieldwork in healthcare. This volume brings together the experiences of established researchers who do fieldwork in clinical and non-clinical settings, focusing on how people interact with healthcare technology, in the form of case studies. These case studies are all personal, reflective accounts of challenges faced and lessons learned, which future researchers might also learn from. We open with an account of studies in the Operating Room, focusing on the role of the researcher, and how participants engage and resist engaging with the research process. Subsequent case studies address themes in a variety of hospital settings, which highlight the variability that is experienced across study settings and the importance of context in shaping what is possible when conducting research in hospitals. Recognising and dealing with emotions, strategies for gaining access, and data gathering are themes that pervade the studies. Later case studies introduce research involving collaborative design and intervention studies, which seek to have an immediate impact on practice. Mental health is a theme of two intervention studies as we move out of the hospital to engage with vulnerable participants suffering from long-term conditions and people in the home. This volume closes with an intervention study in the developing world that ends with some tips for conducting studies in healthcare. Such tips are synthesised through the thematic chapters presented in the companion volume.

This volume presents the proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (ICHI). The conference was a new special topic conference initiative by the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE), held in Vilamoura, Portugal on 7-9 November, 2013. The main theme of the ICHI2013 was Integrating Information and Communication Technologies with Biomedicine for Global Health .

The proceedings offer a unique forum to examine enabling technologies of sensors, devices and systems that optimize the acquisition, transmission, processing, storage, retrieval of biomedical and health information as well as to report novel clinical applications of health information systems and the deployment of m-Health, e-Health, u-Health, p-Health and Telemedicine."