Final submissions due: CLOSED
Publication issue: March/April 2018
Guest editors: Travis Breaux, Arun Iyengar, and Ashish Kundu (ic2-2018@computer.org)
The digital transformation of healthcare on the Internet has been rapid and explosive. The Internet has enabled transfer and communication of healthcare data but also enabled delivery of healthcare services and apps, connecting patients and healthcare providers together. Digital healthcare ecosystems have evolved on top of cloud platforms, mobile computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as wearable devices distributed across geopolitical and socioeconomic boundaries. While such ecosystems promise a future for universally accessible and more intelligent healthcare, the privacy of patients, doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers is of greater concern today than it was previously. Regulatory compliance requirements such as the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) support protection of privacy; however, protection and management of healthcare privacy has several challenges and open problems: for example, how does the application of AI and machine learning for healthcare analytics affect privacy? How can anonymization of genomic and healthcare data be carried out to preserve utility while protecting privacy? How can we protect healthcare devices from leaking sensitive healthcare data? How do we develop the next generation of privacy policies and regulatory compliance regimes?
This special issue on healthcare informatics and privacy will address theoretical and applied research related to the privacy, security and compliance of Internet-specific healthcare data, transactions, apps, services and systems. The issue will be interdisciplinary in nature, welcoming any research related to healthcare informatics and privacy.
Relevant topics include but are not limited to theoretical and applied aspects of the following:
Health data and protected health information (PHI)
- security of healthcare data, such as electronic health records and schemas;
- encryption schemes, key management, homomorphic encryption, and its applications;
- anonymization and de-anoymization of structured and unstructured data, as well as genomic graphs; and
- privacy-preserving integrity techniques for healthcare data.
Regulatory healthcare compliance
- HIPAA compliance and European Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR);
- challenges and issues regarding implementation of compliance; and
- automation of compliance, security, and privacy requirements.
Healthcare services, systems, and infrastructure
- security and privacy for healthcare services on clouds, mobile, and IoT; and
- transactions and blockchains.
Submission Guidelines
All submissions must be original manuscripts of fewer than 5,000 words, focused on Internet technologies and implementations. Please note that each figure counts as 250 words, as part of the word count. All manuscripts are subject to peer review on both technical merit and relevance to IC’s international readership — primarily practicing engineers and academics who are looking for material that introduces new technology and broadens familiarity with current topics. We do not accept white papers, and papers which are primarily theoretical or mathematical must clearly relate the mathematical content to a real-life or engineering application. To submit a manuscript, please log on to ScholarOne (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com:443/ic-cs) to create or access an account, which you can use to log on to IC’s Author Center and upload your submission.