Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience
Scientific International Journal for Parallel and Distributed Computing (Scopus indexed)

Special issue on
Reliability and Security of eHealth Information Systems

http://www.scpe.org/index.php/scpe/pages/view/Call-issue-3-2016

With the increasing population and aging society in several countries, healthcare providers aim to enhance the quality of the healthcare services while balancing the risk mitigation and service cost. Therefore, several new information technologies and innovative communication methodologies have evolved to improve the healthcare sector. ICT-based technologies help in decreasing the healthcare system overhead and increasing the quality of healthcare services. These technologies may include bio-sensors, computer aided diagnosis, Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN), mobile health, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), cloud computing, communication protocols, electronic medical records, big data, and internet of things (IoT). Therefore, the complexity of healthcare systems has increased dramatically during the last two decades. However, the errors of integrating these technologies in healthcare systems cannot be compromised due to the possibility of losing lives and the huge cost associated with such errors. In addition, a considerable effort and time is consumed for system maintenance and recovery when errors occur in these systems. As a result, healthcare systems must go through rigorous testing before they are used.
Despite having several approaches developed for testing and verification of healthcare systems, ICT-related medical incidents that led into losses of money, time, reputation, and in certain cases, lives, still happen frequently. In addition, healthcare providers must have the access to the health information to assist the patients where and when it is needed. It is believed that healthcare systems do not get enough testing and verification before being put into use, even though they are considered safety critical systems. This is due to the high cost of testing, short time to marker, and the lack of proper testing and verification techniques in the literature. In this paper, we provide a survey on existing methods for testing and verification of healthcare information systems, and then, we highlight open issues and challenges in the area.
To ensure the data and information precision the overall communication infrastructure should be reliable. Design errors, system usage problems, design reliability issues, compliance Issues, system failure and vulnerabilities in eHealth care system can lead to critical conditions or even death. Patients expect an electronic health care system that is totally reliable. The eHealth system preserves the care and to provide the errors free service to its users requires innovative methods that can lead to qualitative improvements.
This special issue is chance for researchers, academics, and industries to debate the different issues related to reliable and secure eHealth information system, discuss relevant theoretical and practical solutions, and explore areas related to the theory, applications, development, experiences, and evaluation studies. This platform of knowledge sharing helps the eHealth, professionals how to develop, implement a fully reliable and secure eHealth system. People who work in the area of eHealth information systems, testing and verification of all types of systems related to healthcare, security aspects of eHealth systems, and any other related area from industry and academia are welcome to submit their paper.

Topics
Topics of interest include all aspects related to reliability and security of eHealth Information systems: They include but are not limited to:

• Testing methods for eHealth
• Simulation based methods in eHealth
• Formal methods in eHealth
• Verification of eHealth software and equipment
• Performance evaluation of eHealth systems
• Testing and verification of eHealth
• Healthcare sensors reliability
• Patient data security and reliability
• Fault Tolerance in eHealth
• Vulnerability assessment
• Security access policies and privacy issues in eHealth
• Secured Network Architectures for eHealth
• Secure Transmission, Processing, and Storage
• Reliability of eHealth technologies: mHealth, WBSN.
• Intrusion and fraud detection in eHealth systems
• eHealth Security Forensics and Investigation
• Secure transmission, processing, and storage
• Reliability of mobile Health.
• Reliability of WBSN.
• Electronic health record systems reliability.
• Reliability of eHealth standards: IEEE, HL7, CHA.
• Surveys and state of the art discussions on the subject.

Important dates:
• Submission: February 1, 2016
• Author notification: May 1, 2016
• Revised papers: July 1, 2016
• Author notification: August 1, 2016
• Camera Ready papers due: September 1, 2016
• Publication: September 30, 2016
Special issue editor:
• Amjad Gawanmeh, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and Khalifa University , UAE
• Kashif Saleem, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
• Salam Dhou, Harvard Medical School, USA
• Ibrahim Aboalhaol, VENUS Cybersecurity Corporation, Ottawa, Canada