DigiTAl: 1ST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON DIGITAL HEALTH SYSTEMS FOR THE AGING POPULATION

The number of aging population worldwide increases and it is projected that the people aged 60 or older will globally double from 1 to 2.1 billion until 2050. On the other hand, the number of young people able to take care of the elderly decreases. One of the challenges we are facing is how to support the healthy and independent life of the elderly and how to motivate them to stay an active part of our society. What is more, with the increasing number of seniors, we also face the challenge of educating highly-qualified caregivers, who can support the elderly population. This workshop aims to address these problems by providing a venue for researchers to reflect on their novel ideas, experiences, problems and possible solutions associated with developing digital health systems for the aging population. It covers the following topics: 1) digital healthcare systems for the elderly; 2) assistive systems to support the everyday life of seniors; and 3) intelligent tutoring systems for elderly and their caregivers.



TOPICS

With the demographic shift towards elderly population we are facing new challenges in supporting the seniors and their caregivers. Digital technologies could be the solution to many of the problems we are encountering, such as keeping the elderly physically and socially active, supporting their independent life, keeping them healthy or assisting them in case of health problems. Even more, digital technologies could also contribute to tutoring the professional caregivers as well as family members to cope with challenging behaviour exhibited by the elderly. Intelligent tutoring systems could also help the elderly to increase their affinity and competence in using technology devices and thus to increase the available spectrum of solutions supporting healthy aging.
To explore the potential of digital systems for supporting the elderly, this workshop provides a venue for researchers to reflect on their novel ideas, experiences, problems and possible solutions associated with developing digital health systems for the aging population. More precisely, the workshop focuses on:

 Digital healthcare systems for the elderly
 Assistive systems to support the everyday life of seniors
 Intelligent tutoring systems for elderly and their caregivers
 The associated challenges the research community has to overcome in order to build and deploy such systems in real-world settings.


Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Digital healthcare systems and health-supporting systems for seniors and their caregivers
• Intelligent tutoring systems for caregivers and seniors
• Behaviour monitoring for healthcare applications for the aging population
• Assistive systems for the elderly population
• Gamification for seniors as way of keeping them active and healthy
• Utilizing digital platforms to keep the elderly population active
• New interaction strategies for supporting the elderly and their caregivers
• New methods and tools for supporting and encouraging healthy aging
• Usability studies for intelligent healthcare and tutoring systems for the elderly and their caregivers
• New evaluation strategies and studies for digital health systems for the aging population
• New datasets for building machine learning models for systems supporting the elderly population
• Methods and tools for collecting and annotating data from elderly populations
• Roadmaps and best practices in building and deploying digital health systems for the elderly in real-world settings
• Privacy and ethical considerations in developing intelligent systems for seniors and their caregivers



GOALS

The goal of the workshop is to bring these topics to the attention of researchers from interdisciplinary backgrounds, and to initiate a reflection on possible innovative solutions of the related problems. The workshop participants will have the opportunity to present their works and to participate in an interactive discussion session on practically solving problems from the domain of digital health systems for the aging population. As part of the larger theme of the PETRA conference, the participants will also have the chance to interact with established scientists working with pervasive assistive technologies to exchange valuable ideas that could advance the state-of-the-art in the field. The first DigiTAl Workshop will also serve as a platform for building a network, where researchers could discuss and exchange ideas, problems, and novel solutions related to the domain of digital systems for the aging population.




ORGANIZERS

 Kristina Yordanova
University of Rostock, Germany - kristina.yordanova@uni-rostock.de
 Nikolaj Graf von Malotky
University of Rostock, Germany - nikolaj.graf_von_malotky@uni-rostock.de
 Tomasz Sosnowski
University of Rostock, Germany - tomasz.sosnowski@uni-rostock.de
 Moh’d Abuazizeh
University of Rostock, Germany - mohd.abuazizeh@uni-rostock.de



PUBLICATION

ACM will be the publisher of the proceedings of PETRA conference and workshops. The proceedings will be a volume in the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series in the ACM Digital Library.
Authors must follow the same formatting guidelines as employed for the main conference paper submissions. Refer to the guidelines http://www.petrae.org/guide.html . You can submit your paper using the main conference submission system by selecting the option Workshop Paper from the dropdown menu. To submit a paper, please visit the submission system (http://www.petrae.org/submit-system.html).



DEADLINES & OTHER WORKSHOPS
The list of workshops and deadines are available at the main workshops page (http://www.petrae.org/workshops/index.html). All workshops have the same deadlines.