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Workshop on Scaling Up Care for Older Adults - Scale-IT-up 2025

20 - 22 February, 2025 - Porto, Portugal

In conjunction with the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - BIOSTEC 2025


CO-CHAIRS

Kai Gand
TU Dresden
Germany
 
Brief Bio
Kai Gand studied Business Information Systems at TU Dresden where he also received his doctoral degree in 2019. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Chair of Business Informatics. His primary research interests include business models, business modelling and health information systems in general. He is engaged in nationally and European funded projects on digitalisation in healthcare, project manager of a Horizon 2020 project and part of a research group that investigates the digital transformation of healthcare systems overall.
Tobias Kowatsch
University of Zurich, University of St.Gallen & ETH Zurich
Switzerland
 
Brief Bio
Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch is Associate Professor for Digital Health Interventions at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich. He is also Director at the School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen, and the Scientific Director of the Centre for Digital Health Interventions. CDHI is a joint initiative of the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care at the University of Zurich, the School of Medicine, and the Institute of Technology Management at the University of St.Gallen, and the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich. In close collaboration with his interdisciplinary team and research partners, Tobias designs digital health interventions at the intersection of information systems research, computer science, and behavioral medicine. He helped initiate and participates in the ongoing development of MobileCoach (www.mobile-coach.eu), an open source platform for ecological momentary assessments, health monitoring, and digital health interventions. He is also co-founder of the ETH Zurich and University of St.Gallen spin-off company Pathmate Technologies which creates and delivers digital clinical pathways.
Hannes Schlieter
Technische Universität Dresden
Germany
 
Brief Bio
Dr. Hannes Schlieter is head of the Research Group Digital Health at the Faculty of Economics at TU Dresden. His research focuses on theories and design issues in the field of digital transformation, especially, but not exclusively, in the healthcare sector (Digital Health). His research contributions in the areas of methodological research, adaptation of digital care solutions, implementation of digital health ecosystems, standardization and digitization of patient pathways, and design and development of virtual coaching applications reflect the interdisciplinary nature of his research in national, as well as international research collaborations. His work has already been published in over 90 publications. Currently, Dr. Hannes Schlieter is also the spokesperson of the "FG Digital Health" in the "Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V." (the German Informatics Society). Furthermore, from 2017-2020 he was the head of the junior research group Care4Saxony. In the Research Group Digital Health, Dr. Hannes Schlieter is responsible for strategic orientation, international cooperation, and third-party funding activities. In this role, he works EU projects like vCare, collaborates in Gatekeeper, and is part of national projects, such as MiHubX and QPATH4MS.
Rasita Vinay
University of Zurich
Switzerland
 
Brief Bio
Dr. Rasita Vinay is Postdoctoral Researcher and CORE Director for Digital Ethics and Care for Older Adults at the School of Medicine, University of St. Gallen and the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Zurich. She obtained her PhD in Medical Ethics in 2023 from the University of Zurich, where she focused on the bioethical considerations in improving dementia care. Previously, she studied a Bachelor of Science (Neuroscience) from the University of Melbourne, and a Master in Bioethics from Monash University, Australia. Her research interests include digital health interventions, ethical issues in dementia care, and conversational agents. Rasita has previously published in many international journals in medicine, healthcare and human-computer interactions, including Bioethics, American Journal of Bioethics, Health Policy, British Medical Bulletin, Journal of Human Lactation, BMJ Open, Computers in Human Behaviour and Swiss Medical Weekly.

SCOPE

Key Question: How to Scale Up Care for Older Adults Successfully?

As the global population ages, so does the demand for effective, scalable, and sustainable care solutions for older adults, creating critical challenges in healthcare and societal support systems. The "Scale-IT-up 2025" workshop aims to explore and expand the role of digital health technologies in addressing these challenges, specifically focusing on the shortage and burden of caregivers. We also encourage discussion of digitally enabled care concepts such as at-home hospitalization or virtual wards, which innovate traditional care concepts. This workshop will serve as a platform for researchers, technologists, and practitioners to share insights, innovations, and strategies for integrating digital health solutions into care for older adults.

We invite submissions that address the following themes:

  • Development and implementation of digital health technologies (or other innovative technological solutions) tailored towards care for older adults (e.g., psychosocial support for caregivers, alleviating caregiver burden, supporting older adults, etc.).
  • Digital health interventions facilitating health behavior change and habit formation.
  • Digital health solutions for mitigating the demographic impact on the healthcare system.
  • Scaling and Diffusion of Digital Health Solutions, including both the scaling of business models and regional diffusion.
  • Design considerations of technology for older adults (e.g., value-sensitive design, ethics by design, etc.).
  • Case studies on the effectiveness of digital interventions in care settings.
  • Market analysis and industry engagement identify leading and emerging technology sector players in care for older adults.
  • Transformative solutions moving traditional care into digitally enabled integrated care (e.g., at-home hospitalization).

 

Objectives: This workshop will facilitate multidisciplinary dialogue to:

  • Explore well-established market leaders and top-funded early-stage companies shaping the future of care services for older adults.
  • Engage with findings from interviews and assessments of these companies, providing a comprehensive view of current innovations and trends in the market.
  • Highlight and disseminate cutting-edge research and practical solutions in digital health for older adults.
  • Identify and discuss innovation patterns and lessons learned from successful digital health implementations.
  • Foster collaborations between academia, industry, and healthcare providers to accelerate the adoption of new technologies.

Outcome: The workshop aims to contribute to developing scalable, effective, and human-centered care solutions that can be integrated into existing health systems. Participants will understand how digital health technologies can transform care for older adults and provide support for caregivers.

 

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • How to make prevention successful?
  • How to make healthy longevity successful?
  • How to make healthy aging successful?
  • How to make elderly care successful?
  • How to cope with the economic burden of non-communicable diseases?
  • Which emerging business models in digital health are promising?
  • What needs to change in terms of regulations to make digital health successful?
  • What is the future role of a health insurance company?
  • Which digital health technologies (DHTs) are already used and reimbursed? In which fields? What are those offerings? How are these paid for? (self-paid, basic insurance, additional insurance, etc.)
  • Are you offering DHTs? Did you develop these DHTs yourself or are you partnering with startups or other companies?
  • Do you offer DHTs rather in the prevention or in the management of diseases?
  • For which diseases do you think we need DHTs most? Why? Where do you think DHTs will work best? (what kind of disease and persona)
  • What is your main goal of offering these DHTs? (new revenue streams, cost-efficiency, customer loyalty)
  • What is the importance of business ecosystems for these DHTs?
  • What kind of learnings did you generate so far? Are there DHTs that worked better than others? Why?
  • Could you already assess the effectiveness and/or efficiency of DHTs?
  • What kind of DHTs failed? What were the reasons?
  • How would you improve DHTs you are offering?

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission: December 18, 2024
Authors Notification: January 14, 2025
Camera Ready and Registration: January 22, 2025

WORKSHOP PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Available soon.

PAPER SUBMISSION

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in any of the topics listed above.
Instructions for preparing the manuscript (in Word and Latex formats) are available at: Paper Templates
Please also check the Guidelines.
Papers must be submitted electronically via the web-based submission system using the appropriated button on this page.

PUBLICATIONS

The proceedings will be submitted for indexation by Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI/ISI), DBLP, EI (Elsevier Engineering Village Index), Scopus, Semantic Scholar and Google Scholar.
After thorough reviewing by the workshop program committee, all accepted papers will be published in a special section of the conference proceedings book - under an ISBN reference and on digital support.
All papers presented at the conference venue will be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/).
SCITEPRESS is a member of CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/) and every paper is given a DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

SECRETARIAT CONTACTS

BIOSTEC Workshops - Scale-IT-up 2025
e-mail: biostec.secretariat@insticc.org
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