In promoting big-data as a source of innovation in healthcare and accelerating the translational pathways from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside, the purpose of this special issue is to address the latest technical development and practical applications of big-data for health. Specific focus will be placed on the impact of big-data on bioinformatics, imaging informatics, sensor informatics, medical informatics and public health informatics, including initiatives that enable use of big-data analytics in health systems for improved clinical decision making, enhanced efficiency of care provision, policy development and policy implementation.
The topics of the special issue include, but are not limited to:
- Multiple-omics comparisons and analyses (inclusive of deep sequencing);
- Emerging informatics framework for big-data, as well as programming models and environments to support big-data for health;
- Big data analytics, machine learning algorithms and scalable/parallel algorithms (e.g. including the map-reduce paradigm) for biomedical and health informatics;
- Data fusion, integration, knowledge management and engineering; novel visualisation methods and scalable search architectures;
- Socio-legal and ethical issues related to big data in the context of privacy and security – data preservation, provenance, protection, as well as data integrity and privacy standards and policies;
- Incorporation of behavioural data through pervasive sensing and social media for promoting personal health, disease prevention and population health management;
- Applications of big-data for drug discovery and development, stratified patient management, targeted therapy and minimally invasive surgery, chronic and infectious diseases, outcomes research, coordinated care, environmental health, social health and informatics underpinning major disease management (e.g. neurological disorders, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity);
- Big data and analytics for improving management of healthcare institutions to enhance efficiency, effectiveness and equity;
- Novel approaches, with illustrative country case studies on use of big-data and innovative analytical approaches for measuring health system performance, policy analysis and development, and resource allocation.
Priorities will be given to papers reporting original work supported by large cohort studies with clearly demonstrated clinical translational values supplemented by on-line data sets or algorithms that can be shared by the research community.
Important Dates:
- Deadline for Submission: 29 September 2014
- Submission Opens: 15 September 2014
- First Reviews Due: 1 December 2014
- Final Decision: 18 February 2015
For more information, please refer to the Call-for-Papers (PDF).
