Background
Nursing Informatics is defined as a combination of computer science, information science and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and the delivery of nursing care.
For Nursing Informatics, from the viewpoint of AI, we can apply some techniques such as Data Mining, Chance Discovery, computational reasoning (induction, abduction), etc. They are powerful tools in AI. We can analyze practice of nursing, we can predict a certain incident by analysis of the data, we can infer a certain behaviour or result from the data, etc. In addition, for nursing risk management, those types of research are quite important.
Furthermore, as a result of a development of ubiquitous computing, we are enjoying wearable (ubiquitous) computers. Ubiquitous computing provides us everywhere-computing environments. Since very small sized tip such as RFID includes small computer, we can install computers even on papers. Thus, ubiquitous computing is quite promising.
For computational analysis of nursing activities, it is important to collect necessary data from a practice of nursing. Especially, real time collection of data and analysis of nursing activities will be very important. If we make use of ubiquitous computing, we might be able to perform real time collection of nursing data. If the wearable computer becomes powerful, we might be able to perform real time analysis of nursing data. This will be extended to ubiquitous awareness, ubiquitous alarts, and ubiquitous assistance etc. These ubiquitous systems must be important in the future. Thus, a combination of AI techniques and ubiquitous techniques will be critical in the future.

In this session, we would like to discuss problems and solutions dealing with nursing information (data) such as data extracted from a practice of nursing from AI, psychological and ubiquitous viewpoints. Especially, we would like to focus on the following topics. Of course, other topics are welcome, if they are related to Nursing Informatics, AI, and ubiquitous techniques.

Suggested themes

• Tools and techniques for data collection
  • Tools for collection of activities of nurse and doctor
  • Tools for collection of activities among nurses
  • Tools for collection of activities between nurse and patient etc.
  • Tools for collection of environmental data
  • Ubiquitous techniques
    • Ubiquitous computing
    • Ubiquitous recording system
    • Ubiquitous analysis
    • Ubiquitous awareness
    • Ubiquitous assistance
    • Environment understanding
    • Filed experiments methods
    • Filed experiments system
  • Psychological models for collection
  • Ethics for collection
• Models for activities and behaviour in hospital
  • Behavioral models
  • Scenario extraction
  • Psychological models
  • Nursing practice models
  • Ontologies for activities by nurse
  • Dictionaries for activities by nurse
• Nursing Informatics
• Techniques and theories for an analysis of activities
  • Data mining
  • Chance Discovery
  • Computational reasoning (abduction, induction etc.)
• Risk management in hospital
  • Psychological models
  • Computational models
  • Ubiquitous models
• etc.

• Extended abstracts format (in a plain text, PostScript or PDF) should include:
  1. Major theme of the paper, related to the major themes given above.
  2. Paper title.
  3. Extended abstract of 500 to 1500 words, in English.
  4. Author or co-authors with names, addresses, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address.

The papers can be submitted to:

• Akinori Abe
  ATR (ave@atr.jp)

Important date

These schedules may be changed.

• April 1, 2004: Deadline for exended abstracts.
• April 14, 2004: Notification of acceptance of papers.
• April 28, 2004: Deadline for camera-ready papers: hard copies and electronic versions.