Introduction
The healthcare and social care sectors are living a continuously growing importance in the past years throughout the entire world, and particularly in most Western countries, where we witness an increase of expenditure in health and social care per capita every year. This is related to many aspects of contemporary society, including an increase in life expectancy, the public demand for a better quality of life and better social and health services. This must be met with more cost-efficient approaches, and new technology-based solutions for providing health and social services.The ICT sector is highly present in this context, with a wide range of actions, interventions and developments, from research and development of new models for application and/or integration of existing technology, new technological advances, until the widespread reach of broadband internet access to all population (particularly remote areas) and overcoming the digital divide due to ability to use technology. Simultaneously specific public and private health and social actions are emerging, and the problematic issues of integrating the population with special care needs (such as elder people and the temporarily or permanently disabled) in the e-Health and e-Social care systems are being faced as emergent, and contemplated in the social development agenda.
Overall objectives of this book
The handbook of research intends to introduce and discuss the main issues, challenges, opportunities and trends related to the recent ICT-based developments, applications and services in all embracing fields of social and healthcare.
Recommended topics:
The handbook is intended to cover the following aspects:
- Emerging trends on the social and health care sectors, that can be addressed by ICT-based applications;
- User needs analysis;
- Technological aspects of solutions and applications;
- Studies of preparedness, adoption and impact;
- Applications and solutions under development or implemented in the sector, from the technological, social, organizational dimensions;
- The human aspects, comprehending psychological aspects; behavioral effects; social effects; accessibility to technologies; trust; expectancies; motivations.
Audience
The handbook of research is intended to support a professional audience of the health care and social care sectors of public and private institutions, ICT developers and researchers, ICT enterprise managers, and also an academic audience (teachers, researchers and students, mainly of post-graduate studies).
Submission Procedure:
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before
February 10, 2011, a 1-2 page proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of the proposed chapter. This proposal should be sent in Word format or PDF to
isabel.m.f.miranda@gmail.com Authors will be notified by February 15, 2011 about the status of their proposals. Authors of accepted proposals will be sent guidelines to prepare the full chapter (7,000 – 10,000 words) to be submitted by May 20, 2011.
All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis by two or three reviewers.
Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication scheduled for release in 2012.
Important dates:
Deadline for proposals submission: February 10, 2011
Notification of proposals acceptance/rejection: February 15, 2011
Full chapter submission deadline: May 20, 2011
Notification of review results: July 15, 2011
Submission of revised version of accepted chapters: September 5, 2011
Submission of final materials of accepter chapters: September 30, 2011