*** CALL FOR PAPERS ***

Workshop on Integrating Ambient Information into Healthcare Environments in conjunction with HCI 2011, Newcastle, UK, 5th July 2011

TOPIC
Ambient information is starting to be embedded into healthcare environments such as hospitals in order to overcome inherent deficiencies in the original building designs. However, it is unclear how best to integrate new technologies to make these environments more patient-friendly. This is an issue of considerable interest to architects, environmental psychologists and designers of hospitals and is increasingly of interest to those in the HCI community, as many new applications are starting to emerge that attempt to augment often unsuitable and badly laid out hospitals with ambient information designed to support and guide the patient/visitor throughout their appointment. This workshop will focus on the overlap between hospital building design and ambient/embedded information design.

The kinds of ambient information/applications that this workshop is addressing are (but are not confined to):
- Wayfinding and signage systems (especially dynamic signage)
- 'Just-in-time' patient processing systems including appointment scheduling and event notification
- Patient automatic checking-in/registration systems
- Ambient displays for coordination
- The concept of the ‘patient information pathway’: virtual patient data that follows the patient around the building
- Patient location tracking
- Tangibles for patient/visitor navigation interactions
- Ambient information displays
- Responsive patient environments
- Patient data protection and privacy with ambient systems
- Systems designed to involve patients and visitors in the design or evaluation of health environments.

GOALS OF THE WORKSHOP
The primary goals for the workshop are:
- To bring together a community of researchers and designers interested in creating interactive technologies based on ambient information in healthcare environments
- To present and discuss design and research projects relating to ambient information in healthcare environments
- To share and discuss concepts and prototypes that have been designed to explore ambient information in empirical work
- To identify fundamental differences, similarities and synergies between different design and research approaches that have been employed to study ambient information in HCI.

SUBMISSION
Participants are invited to submit a four page position paper in the BCS paper format. Templates are available at http://www.bcs.org/category/7939

Submissions in pdf format should be emailed to Ruth Conroy Dalton at: ruth.dalton@northumbria.ac.uk

IMPORTANT DATES
The deadline for workshop paper submissions is 1st May 2011
Acceptance notifications will be sent out 20th May 2011
The workshop will be on the 5th July 2011 at HCI 2011 in Newcastle, UK

ORGANIZERS
Ruth Conroy Dalton
School of the Built and Natural Environment
Northumbria University

Nick Dalton
Department of Computing
The Open University

Rebecca Cain
WMG
The University of Warwick

Paul Marshall
WMG
The University of Warwick

Christoph Hölscher
Center for Cognitive Science
University of Freiburg

IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Website: http://ambientinfomationhealthcareworksho.blogspot.com/
HCI 2011 workshops: http://hci2011.co.uk/site/workshops/
Main Contact: Ruth Conroy Dalton - ruth.dalton@northumbria.ac.uk