Techno-Anthropology is an emerging interdisciplinary research field focusing on human/technology interactions and relations, and how these can be understood and facilitated in context. Techno-Anthropology also considers how technological innovation, development and implementation can be made in an appropriate and pragmatic way in relation to understanding work practices. Techno-Anthropology has much to offer the health informatics and eHealth fields, and this book presents the work of experienced international researchers who share here how they have applied Techno-Anthropology methodologies to their research. The book is divided into three sections: ethnographic and anthropological perspectives on methodology; ethical and sociotechnical approaches; and users, participation and human factors. Topics covered include: learning the craft of Techno-Anthropology; anthropological approaches in studying technology induced errors; technology and the ecology of chronic illness in everyday life; Techno-Anthropologists as agents of change; and using rapid ethnography to support the design and implementation of health information technologies, as well as many more. Of interest to researchers and practitioners within the health informatics field as well as students and scholars, the book will inspire researchers and practitioners to examine health informatics from a new perspective.

Nursing informatics has a long history of focusing on information management and nurses have a long history of describing their computer use. However, based on the technical advances and through the ongoing and consistent changes in healthcare today, we are now challenged to look to the future and help determine what nurses and patients/consumers will need going forward. This book presents the proceedings of the Post Conference to the 13th International Conference on Nursing Informatics, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2016. The theme of the Post Conference is Forecasting Informatics Competencies for Nurses in the Future of Connected Health. This book includes 25 chapters written as part of the Post Conference; a result of the collaboration among nursing informatics experts from research, education and practice settings, from 18 countries, and from varying levels of expertise – those beginning to forge new frontiers in connected health and those who helped form the discipline. The book content will help forecast and define the informatics competencies for nurses in practice, and as such, it will also help outline the requirements for informatics training in nursing programs around the world. The content will aid in shaping the nursing practice that will exist in our future of connected health, when practice and technology will be inextricably intertwined.

Health IT is a major field of investment in support of healthcare delivery, but patients and professionals tend to have systems imposed upon them by organizational policy or as a result of even higher policy decision. And, while many health IT systems are efficient and welcomed by their users, and are essential to modern healthcare, this is not the case for all. Unfortunately, some systems cause user frustration and result in inefficiency in use, and a few are known to have inconvenienced patients or even caused harm, including the occasional death. This book seeks to answer the need for better understanding of the importance of robust evidence to support health IT and to optimize investment in it; to give insight into health IT evidence and evaluation as its primary source; and to promote health informatics as an underpinning science demonstrating the same ethical rigour and proof of net benefit as is expected of other applied health technologies. The book is divided into three parts: the context and importance of evidence-based health informatics; methodological considerations of health IT evaluation as the source of evidence; and ensuring the relevance and application of evidence. A number of cross cutting themes emerge in each of these sections. This book seeks to inform the reader on the wide range of knowledge available, and the appropriateness of its use according to the circumstances. It is aimed at a wide readership and will be of interest to health policymakers, clinicians, health informaticians, the academic health informatics community, members of patient and policy organisations, and members of the vendor industry.

As the importance of electronic and digital devices in the provision of healthcare increases, so does the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to make the most of the new technical possibilities which have become available. This book presents the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Nursing Informatics, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2016. This biennial international conference provides one of the most important opportunities for healthcare professionals from around the world to gather and exchange expertise in the research and practice of both basic and applied nursing informatics. The theme of this 13th conference is eHealth for All: Every Level Collaboration – From Project to Realization. The book includes all full papers, as well as workshops, panels and poster summaries from the conference. Subjects covered include a wide range of topics, from robotic assistance in managing medication to intelligent wardrobes, and from low-cost wearables for fatigue and back stress management to big data analytics for optimizing work processes, and the book will be of interest to all those working in the design and provision of healthcare today.

This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving and diverse field of anthropological studies of technology. It features 39 original chapters, each reviewing the state of the art of current research and enlivening the field of study through ethnographic analysis of human-technology interfaces, forms of social organisation, technological practices and/or systems of belief and meaning in different parts of the world. The Handbook is organised around some of the most important characteristics of anthropological studies of technology today: the diverse knowledge practices that technologies involve and on which they depend; the communities, collectives, and categories that emerge around technologies; anthropology’s contribution to proliferating debates on ethics, values, and morality in relation to technology; and infrastructures that highlight how all technologies are embedded in broader political economies and socio-historical processes that shape and often reinforce inequality and discrimination while also generating diversity. All chapters share a commitment to human experiences, embodiments, practices, and materialities in the daily lives of those people and institutions involved in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and/or use of particular technologies. Chapters 11 and 31 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Progress in medicine has traditionally relied heavily on classical research pathways involving randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to establish reliable evidence for any given therapeutic intervention. However, not only are RCTs lengthy and expensive, they have a number of other disadvantages, including the fact that they are currently failing to keep pace with the number of potential innovative treatment options being developed, particularly in areas such as rare diseases. With the vast amount of data increasingly available for use in profiling patient characteristics and establishing correlations between outcomes and potential predictors, predictive modeling may offer a potential solution to the limitations of RCTs. This book presents the proceedings of the 2016 Health Informatics meets eHealth conference, held in Vienna, Austria in May 2016. The conference provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, decision makers and vendors to discuss innovative health informatics and eHealth solutions with a view to improving the quality, efficacy and efficiency of healthcare. The theme of the conference is Predictive Modeling in Healthcare. Covering subjects as diverse as fall-detection in the elderly, diabetes, physiotherapy and pediatric oncology, this book will be of interest to all those working in the field of (e)healthcare and its delivery.

Context is key in the design, implementation and evaluation of health information technology. Healthcare systems around the world are in transition; adopting technologies to deal with the problems of aging populations, increased numbers of chronically ill patients and limited resources. But a 'one size fits all' approach is not the answer, and may limit those local healthcare system innovations that are so crucial to the development of health informatics. Even the most advanced systems will fail to achieve the desired outcomes if context is not taken into account. This book presents the proceedings of the Context Sensitive Health Informatics (CSHI) conference, held in Curitiba, Brazil, in August 2015. Context sensitive health informatics is about health information technologies and their environments, and the 26 papers included here examine how health informatics systems are developed, implemented and evaluated in a complex environment of many places, many users, many uses and in many contexts. The book is divided into four themes: different users in different contexts; evaluating for context through usability testing and ensuring patient safety; organizational and social issues in different places; and understanding different contexts using theory. This overview of the research and experience critical to ensuring the successful introduction and adaptation of healthcare systems to new countries, contexts and healthcare settings will be of interest to all those involved in improving the quality of healthcare worldwide.