About the Contributors

Dr. Sabah Mohammed graduated in 1977 and joined Sony as a maintenance Engineer. In 1979 he joined Glasgow University for his graduate studies where he obtained his Post-Graduate Diploma and Masters in Computing Science. After that he continued his PhD graduate studies in Computer Science at Brunel University, London, UK where his PhD thesis was about developing an intelligent system for designing adaptive computer architectures. After his PhD graduation, Dr. Mohammed joined several academic institutions as Assistant/Associate Professor of Computer Science including (BU, Amman University, Philadelphia University, Applied Science University and HCT). During this period (19862001), Dr. Mohammed chaired several Computer Science and Information Systems departments including (Philadelphia University, Applied Science University, HCT). Since late 2001, Dr. Mohammed is full Professor of Computer Science with tenure at Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Mohammed also served as a Visiting Professor at the Laurentian University, Department of Math and Computer Science during winter 2007. Currently Dr. Mohammed is serving also as an Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Western Ontario (2009-2012). Dr. Mohammed has co-authored four text books in Compilers, Artificial Intelligence, Java Programming and Applied Image Processing. Dr. published over 90 refereed publications and was the MSc advisor for 17 students and 1 PhD student. Dr. Mohammed has received research support from a variety of governmental and industrial organizations. Dr. Mohammed organized two international conferences as well as chairing several conference sessions besides being as an IPC member of several notable conferences. Dr. Mohammed is the coordinator of Northern Ontario Web Intelligence research group that was established during 2003. Dr. Mohammed's research interests include Web Intelligence, Ubiquitous Computing, Web-Oriented Architectures, Ambient and Mobile Computing, Image Processing for Ubiquitous Images and Medical Informatics. Dr. Mohammed is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence-Academy Publisher-Finland. Dr. Mohammed is also on the editorial boards of several other journals (e.g. Computer Aided Engineering and Technology-Inderscience, Journal of Universal Computing-Springer, International Journal of Computing and Information Sciences-IJCIS Publishers, International Journal of Network Security-IJNS Publisher, International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence-International Scientific Publishers and Journal of Computer Science-Academy Publisher). Dr. Mohammed is a member of the British Computer Society, Professional Software Engineer of Ontario, Professional member of the ACM, CIPS and IEEE.

Jinan Fiaidhi is a Tenure Full Professor and Graduate Coordinator at the Department of Computer Science - Lakehead University. She is also Adjunct Research Professor with the University of Western Ontario. She received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Brunel University in 1986, a Postgraduate Diploma in Microprocessors Programming from Essex University in 1983 and a Diploma in Engineering Management from the University of Technology in 1978. Her research interest involves Personal Learning Environment, Collaborative Learning, Telemedical Education, Virtual Multimedia Learning Objects, Mobile Learning, Collaborative Learning at the Enterprise Level and at the Web, Applications of Mashups, Widgets and Rich Internet Applications in Learning, Developing Learning Infrastructures (e.g. P2P, Mobile, Wireless, Grid, Web 2.0), Learning Ontologies and Folksonomies, and Learning Reasoners. Dr. Fiaidhi have a long research and teaching experience as she held various academic positions including being a chairperson of the Department of Computer Science-University of Technology. Dr. Fiaidhi research is fully supported by NSERC and CFI research grants. Dr. Fiaidhi authored four books, five chapters in books and over than 100 refereed articles in highly reputed journals and conferences. Dr. Fiaidhi have several notable research achievements which include Virtual SceneBeans, DICOM Based Mobile Infrastructure for Telemedical Learning, Biomedical Semantic Blog, and Ontology Extracting Agent for Telemedical Blogging. Dr. Fiaidhi is a Professional Engineer of Ontario (PEng), a Senior Member of IEEE and member of CIPS, ACM and the BCS.

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Norm Archer, Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus in the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada, and a Special Advisor to the McMaster eBusiness Research Centre. Norm and his graduate students and colleagues are intensively involved in studies of the adoption and use of electronic health records in Canada, identity theft and fraud, and a range of eBusiness issues.

Dr. José Javier Astrain has taught courses including programming, operating systems, ambient intelligence and wireless sensor networks, pattern recognition, database systems and computer networks at Universidad Publica de Navarra. Dr. Astrain holds an M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universidad Publica de Navarra in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the same university in 2004. He is currently an Assistant Professor of computer science. His current research interests include pattern recognition, semantic web and folksonomies.

Panagiotis D. Bamidis is an Assistant Professor of Medical Education Informatics at the Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is a permanent member of the International Committee of the iSHIMR conferences, Editorial Board member of the Health Informatics Journal and the Hippokratia Journal, and a reviewer of the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in BioMedicine, Computer Methods and Programs in BioMedicine, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing and others. His research interests are within Affective and Physiological Computing and HCI, affective and assistive technologies for the disabled and the elderly, technology enhanced learning in medical education, collaborative learning and content sharing and social educational networks, areas in which he has published over 80 papers in various journals and conference proceedings. He has been the Scientific Co-ordinator of 8 national and international grants, while he is currently the project director for the CIP-PSP Long Lasting Memories/LLM project and the eContentPlus2008 project mEducator.

Dr. Elizabeth Borycki is an Assistant Professor in the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Professor Borycki has worked in numerous roles among them Consultant, Disease Management Specialist, Clinical Informatics Specialist, and Researcher. Elizabeth teaches organizational behaviour and change management, systems evaluation, quality improvement, research methods and biomedical fundamentals in the undergraduate and graduate programs at the School of Health Information Science. Her research interests include clinical informatics, change management, health information system implementations, patient safety, project management and information seeking involving health information systems. Elizabeth has co-authored many papers evaluating the effects of health information systems upon information seeking and patient safety. More recently, she has edited a book on the Human, Social and Organizational Aspects of Health Information Systems.

Professor Dr. Andrej Brodnik BSc received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His main research interests are succinct data structures and efficient algorithms. He is an author of over 100 scientific papers and several international patents. Dr. Brodnik holds a position of Professor at the University of Primorska, and University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and had a position of Adjoint Professor at the University of Technology, Lulea, Sweden. Before joining University of Primorska he was CTO at ActiveTools, Slovenia. At University of Primorska he served as a vice-rector. He is currently director of Primorska Institute of Natural Sciences and Technology at the University of Primorska. Dr. Brodnik is winner of, among others, "Boris Kidric Foundation" Award (Slovenian national scientific award), Fullbright Scholarship, ITRC/ICR Fellowship, Innovation Cup and IBM Faculty Award. He is member of IEEE and ACM.

Ivan Chorbev was born in Ohrid in the Republic of Macedonia, on April 27, 1980. He received his bachelor degree in computer science, automation and electrical engineering in 2004 and the M. Sci degree in computer science in 2006 from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University "St. Cyril and Methodius" in Skopje, R. of Macedonia. He received his PhD in the area of e-medicine and telemedicine at the same university in 2009. His employment experience includes Macedonian Telecommunications - T-Home. Now he teaches C/C++ programming, Computer Graphics, Computer Animation and Web Design at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology in Skopje. His fields of interest include combinatorial optimization, constraint programming, machine learning, web programming technologies, the application of computers in medicine and medical information systems. He is a member of the IEEE.

Eleni Christodoulou is currently a senior researcher in the Computer Science Department of the University of Cyprus carrying out research in the areas eServices (eHealth, eGovernment), collaborative working environments and mobile wireless computing, She gained a Ph.D. in Medical Informatics and she has an over 20 years working experience in the Information Technology business and academia sector both in Germany and Cyprus especially in the provision of consultancy and implementations in the eHealth sector. She has been participating, as an expert and as a project coordinator in over 15 internationally and nationally funded projects and studies, including different IST and eTen projects related to eGovernment and eHealth like: Mpower, HealthService24, LinkCare, MEMO, eUser. She has been the coordinator of the IPE funded DITIS project, which was ranked seventh among over eighty products at the World Summit Award (WSA) Competition in 2003 and among the finalists in the eHealth Ministerial conference 2003.

Dr. Alberto Córdoba has taught courses including software engineering, Web 2.0 and Semantic Web at Universidad Publica de Navarra and Universidad Nacional de Education a Distancia. His research focus is on object design, Web 2.0, Semantic Web and folksonomies. Dr. Cordoba received the MS degree in physics from the Universidad del Pais Vasco in 1982 and the PhD degree in physics from the same university in 1991. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics Engineering and Computer Science. He is member of the ACM.

Christel Daniel (MD, PhD, MCU-PH) is a computer science senior researcher at the department of information systems of the Hospital Europeen Georges Pompidou in Paris, France, and at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM). Dr. Daniel is the editor of the IHE Anatomic Pathology Technical Framework, vol. 1 & 2. She has published multiple papers on the use of virtual slides in pathology, the role of terminologies and ontologies in electronic health records, and the use of medical standards in pathology.

Ivica Dimitrovski was born in Kratovo in the Republic of Macedonia, on December 18, 1981. He received his bachelor and master degrees in computer science, automation and electrical engineering in 2005 and 2008, respectively, from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University "St. Cyril and Methodius" in Skopje, R. of Macedonia. Now he is working on his PhD thesis in the area of content-based image retrieval. At present he is a teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology in Skopje. His fields of interest include image processing, medical images, machine learning, content-based retrieval of multimedia data and web programming technologies.

D. Francisco Echarte received his MS degree in computer science from the Universidad del Pais Vasco in 1999. He is currently a PhD student in computer science at the Universidad Publica de Navarra. He is also working as IT specialist at the Healthcare Service of Navarra Government. His current research interests include semantic web, folksonomies and social webs.

Prof. Christo El Morr (PhD Biomedical Engineering, Compiegne University of Technology-France, 1997). He served in computer science and MIS in Lebanon and UAE. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Health Informatics at York University, Canada. His research projects cover healthcare, computer science engineering and social sciences. His research interests are multidisciplinary, they include mainly e-Health, e-Collaboration, Virtual Communities, Software Accessibility for people with Visual Disability, PACS and Health Information Systems integration. He consulted for international organization and served as an Expert Reviewer for the Ministry of Research and Innovation — Ontario, Canada (Ontario Research Fund).

Daniel Ruiz Fernández received his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Alicante (Spain) in 1998 and his Ph degree in Computer Science from the same university in 2003. Between 1999 and 2004 he worked as a lecturer at the University of Alicante. Since 2004, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Technology and Information at the University of Alicante. Additionally, he is a founding member of the IBIS research group of the University of Alicante, and a member of IEEE and Computer Society. He has been a leader of several national projects related to medical informatics and he is also a member of several conferences committees and editorial board member of international publications. His research interests are focused in medical informatics, computer architectures, distributed computing and computer networks.

Andrea Gaggioli is Research Professor of General Psychology and Senior Researcher of the Interactive Communication and Ergonomics of New Technologies — ICE-NET - Lab at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and Deputy Head Researcher at the Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory — ATNP-Lab — at the Istituto Auxologico Italiano in Milan, Italy. Gaggioli obtained his M.S. degree in Psychology from University of Bologna and a Ph.D. in Psychobiology from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Milan. In the past, he collaborated with the Competence Center for Virtual Reality at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany. His research goal is to investigate how new technologies can be used to enhance people well-being and promote positive social change.

Marcíal Garcfa-Rojo (MD, PhD) is the coordinator of information systems of the Hospital General de Ciudad Real, Spain. He is member of the Council of the Spanish Society of Health Informatics (SEIS) and the Spanish Society of Pathology-Spanish Division of the International Academy of Pathology (SEAP-DEAIP), and editor of the Spanish Journal of Pathology (Revista Espanola de Patologia). Main research areas are medical informatics, immunohistochemistry and molecular pathology. He is chair of the European project EURO-TELEPATH, Anatomic Telepathology Network, Action IC0604 of the European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST).

Dimosthenis Georgiadis is currently a PhD candidate in the Computer Science of the University of Cyprus. Due to the last years he worked in numerous projects evolved in the eHealth domain. Such projects are DITIS, Linkcare, HS24, mPower and MELCO. During these projects he advanced in user requirements collection, building intelligent web interfaces, carried out surveys, collect and analyze data and conduct interviews and trainings with healthcare professionals. Within the next months he's planning to complete his PhD thesis that is focused in wireless collaboration that is focused in the eHealth domain.

Panagiotis Germanakos is Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and MIS, University of Nicosia (since 2008). He obtained his PhD from the University of Athens (2008) and his MSc in International Marketing Management from the Leeds University Business School (1999). His B.Sc. was in Computer Science (1998) and also holds a HND Diploma of Technician Engineer in the field of Computer Studies (1996). He is also a Research Scientist, in the Semantic and Cognitive Research Adaptivity Technologies (SCRAT) research group of the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus (since 2003) and in the Faculty of Communication & Media Studies, University of Athens (since 2004). His research interest is in Web Adaptation and Personalization Environments and Systems based on user profiling encompassing amongst others visual, cognitive and emotional processes, implemented on desktop and mobile / wireless platforms. He has several publications, including co-edited books, chapters, articles in journals, and conference contributions, including a best student paper award (Adaptive Hypermedia 2008 conference).

Dr. Hamada Ghenniwa is Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, and is the head of Cooperative Distributed Systems Engineering Group. Dr. Ghenniwa internationally renowned for his expertise in computational intelligence for coordination and cooperation in distributed "systems" environments. It includes theoretical and engineering foundation of agent-oriented, service-oriented, and Grid computing to improve the "quality" of cooperative distributed systems. Application areas include enterprise integration, electronic business, collaborative manufacturing and complex real-time systems. He published the findings of his research in more than 150 publications in world-class journals, books and conference proceedings. Dr. Ghenniwa's research activities also include industrial R&D in collaboration with industrial partners and government institutes to develop sophisticated system architectures, tools and prototypes that range from mobile physical robots, to integration and collaborative tools, to intelligent manufacturing and business solutions. All of these activities are conducted in three specialized Labs: Distributed Intelligent Systems Lab focuses on complex real-time systems and intelligent manufacturing; Software Engineering Lab focuses on cooperative distributed systems architecture and technologies; EK3 Innovation Lab focuses on information technology & knowledge engineering.

Dr. Candace J. Gibson is an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of Western Ontario, in London, ON. She has been involved in medical research, teaching to undergraduate baccalaureate, medical, nursing and dental students, and administration in the department's graduate and undergraduate degree programs. Over the past decade she has been actively engaged in the introduction of teaching in health informatics as a medical school elective and in the health information management program in the Faculty of Health Sciences. In the latter program she teaches courses in pathology, health informatics and health information management. Her current interests include the development of effective e-learning tools, HI and HIM curriculum development, and the introduction and use of the electronic health record.

Alessandra Gorini was born in 1976 in Milan, Italy, where she obtained her degree in experimental psychology at the Universita Vita e Salute San Raffaele. Successively she obtained a master degree in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Padova, Italy, and a Master in Affective Neuroscience at the Maastricht University, The Netherlands, where she is actually completing her Ph.D. in Affective Neuroscience. After some years of clinical activities and research on anxiety disorders, now she works at the Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory - ATNP-Lab - at the Istituto Auxologico Italiano in Milan, Italy studying the clinical applications of virtual reality and new technologies for the treatment of anxiety disorders.

W. Ed Hammond is Professor-emeritus, Department of Community and Family Medicine and Professor-emeritus, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University and Adjunct Professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He is a Past President of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). He is in his third term as Chair of Health Level 7; he is Co-chair of the Advisory Council; and co-chair of the Clinical Interoperability Council. He was Chair of the Data Standards Working Group of the Connecting for Health Public-Private Consortium. Dr. Hammond was a member of the IOM Committee on Patient Safety Data Standards and a member of the Panel for the evaluation of ONC. He served as President of the American College of Medical Informatics and as Chair of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute. He served as the Convenor of ISO Technical Committee 215, Working Group 2 for 6 years and is currently ISO TC 215's Ambassador to Developing Countries. He is chair of the ISO/CEN/HL7/CDISC/IHTSDO Joint Initiative Council. He is a founding fellow of ACMI and a founding fellow of AIMBE. He was a member of the National Library of Medicine's Long Range Planning Committee (2006) and a member of the Healthcare Information Technology Advisory Panel of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (2006). He was an advisor to the American Hospital Association Information Technology Standards Initiative Strategy Committee and a member of the Tolven Institute Governing Board. Dr. Hammond was awarded the Paul Ellwood Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the ACMI Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence in November 2003. He has published over 350 technical articles.

Ben Hughes is a researcher at ESADE Business School, examining diverse topics such as open innovation in pharmaceutical companies, knowledge management in consulting companies, or the use of the internet to promote healthcare. He has published related materials in journals such as the Journal Medical Internet Research, the International Journal for Medical Informatics, or R&D management, and has worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company advising clients in the health care sector on issues around the use of the internet. He holds a Master in Research in Social Science from ESADE Business School, an MBA from HEC Business School, a M.Sci. in Physics from University College London, and is currently completing his PhD at ESADE.

Jun Hu is a systems analyst at Health Canada and a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests are in application architecture, distributed data mining and privacy. She has a M.Sc. (2006) and B.Sc. (2004) in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa.

David Isern is a researcher of the University Rovira i Virgili's Department of Computer Science and Mathematics. He is also associate professor of the Open University of Catalonia. He received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence (2009) and an MSc (2005) from the Technical University of Catalonia. His research interests are intelligent software agents, distributed systems, user's preferences management, and ontologies, especially applied in healthcare and information retrieval systems. He has been involved in several research projects (National and European), and published several papers and conference contributions.

Boban Joksimoski was born February 3rd 1986 in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. In 2008 he received his bachelor degree in Information Science, Informatics and Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University "St. Cyril and Methodius" in Skopje, R. of Macedonia. Currently he is continuing his education for his Master Degree at the same faculty. His interests include Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Animation, Geographical Information Systems and application of Information Sciences in medicine. Currently he is teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Informatics, European University - Republic of Macedonia. Other significant work experience includes freelance 2D and 3D graphical artist. He is a member of IEEE.

Erin Jones completed both her undergraduate degree in Psychology, and her Master of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. The early part of her career was spent in research and development of Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs), Knowledge Management, and eLearning solutions at Princess Margaret Hospital - a part of the University Health Network and Canada's premier cancer-treatment facility. At Princess Margaret Hospital, Erin's work focused on human-centred design, needs investigation, and usability testing research, with an eye to encouraging patient empowerment and a client-focused approach to care. Erin is currently with the department of Research and Innovation at George Brown College in Canada, where she specializes in innovations in health technology.

Donald Juzwishin Ph.D. is principal of Juzwishin Consulting Inc. and adjunct associate professor in the Health Information Science program at the University of Victoria. His firm specializes in helping organizations with health reform initiatives and information needs to improve internal processes and serve patients more effectively. Formerly, as the CEO of the Health Council of Canada and as Director of Health Technology Assessment at the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Dr. Juzwishin pioneered methods and tools that help bridge knowledge creation to decision making. He has 30 years of experience in health care working as an administrator, policy maker, researcher and advisor and has served on the Board of the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health and the Partners in Health Advisory Board of the Canadian Society for International Health. Dr. Juzwishin has published in the fields of health services administration, policy making, health care politics, accountability and health technology assessment.

Dr. Stefane M. Kabene is a faculty member in the Aubrey Dan Management and Organizational Studies Program with a cross appointment in the Faculty of Health Science at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. His primary interests are in healthcare, information and communication technology and human resources for health. His focus is in Interprofessional collaborative practice, knowledge transfer, quality of care and patient involvement in clinical decision making. The future of health care lies in health professionals' capacity and willingness to develop new ways of working together for the benefit of the patient. Knowledge and power sharing, role valuing, use of information and communication technology and patients' participation in decision making are only a few of the variables we need to better understand. Dr. Kabene is involved in research projects with the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, the School of Nursing, and the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Eleni Kaldoudi is an Assistant Professor of Physics of Medical Imaging and Telemedicine at the School of Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. Her research interests are within medical informatics and telematics, with emphasis on technologies supporting medical education, home care telematics, medical image management, and magnetic resonance imaging, areas in which she has published one book and over 50 papers in various journals and conference proceedings. She is currently acting as an expert in the EU FP7 Programme "Capacities: Regions of Knowledge, Research Potential and Coherent Development of Policies", and has been an Associate Editor in the field of "eLearning" for the journal of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine. She has been a reviewer in a number of scientific journals and a member of the scientific committee for a number of international conferences in the field of medical informatics and telematics, and a scientific/technical coordinator in 6 national and EU grants.

Lisa King recently completed her Honors BA in Psychology at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. She hopes to continue her studies in the graduate program in Psychology at UWO. Her interests reside in health psychology and human factors. While completing her degree she was a research assistant in the field of human resources for health and technology working with Dr. Stefane Kabene. This is her first published contribution.

Stathis Konstantinidis has received a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science, University of Crete, Greece, and an MSc in Medical Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is currently a PhD Candidate in Medical Education Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and he is also working as research associate at the Laboratory of Medical Informatics of Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and teaching at Technological Educational Institute of West Macedonia, Kozani, Greece.

Dr. Andre Kushniruk is a Professor at the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Kushniruk conducts research in a number of areas including electronic health records, evaluation of the effects of technology, human-computer interaction in health care and other domains as well as cognitive science. His work is known internationally and he has published widely in the area of health informatics. He focuses on developing new methods for the evaluation of information technology and studying human-computer interaction in health care in studies of technology designed for healthcare providers and patients. Dr. Kushniruk has held academic positions at a number of Canadian universities and worked with a number of major hospitals in Canada, the United States and Europe. He holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Biology, as well as a M.Sc. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology.

Dr. Rebecca E. Lee serves as director of the Texas Obesity Research Center in the Department of Health and Human Performance at the University of Houston, and is an associate professor in the Department and holds a courtesy appointment at the University of Texas School of Public Health. She is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Women's Health and the American Journal of Health Promotion. She has authored and co-authored numerous studies in peer-reviewed publications, serves as a charter member on the Community Level Health Promotion Study Section for the Center for Scientific Review at the National Institute of Health, and has received many honors and awards, including the College of Education Research Excellence Award in 2005 and 2008, at the University of Houston, the Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Texas Council on Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) and Stroke, and is a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. She is principal investigator for several federally and privately funded research grants including the International Health Challenge in Second Life, funded by the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Dr. Simon Y. Liu is the Director of Information Systems at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Director of Information Management and Security at the Department of Justice; the Information Technology Architect at the Treasury Department; and a program manager in the private sector. Dr. Liu has published over 60 book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers. He holds two doctoral degrees in Computer Science and Higher Education Administration; three master degrees in Government, Business Administration, and Computer Science; and a bachelor degree in Mathematics. He is the Associate Editor-in-Chief of the IT Professional magazine published by the Computer Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Suzana Loskovska received the bachelor and master degrees in computer science and automation from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University ,,Ss. Cyril and Methodius", Skopje, R. of Macedonia, in 1989 and 1992, respectively, and the PhD from Technical University of Wien, Wien, Austria in 1995. At present, she is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University ,,Ss. Cyril and Methodius" in Skopje, R. of Macedonia. Her research interests include programming, visualization, human-computer interaction, virtual reality, medical imaging, modeling and visualization of processes in medical praxis.

Dr. AbdulMutalib Masaud-Wahaishi is an Assistant Professor at the United Arab Emirates University, College of Information Technology Dr. AbdulMutalib received a B.Sc. degree (1986) in Computer Engineering from Al-Fateh University, Tripoli Libya; M. Eng. Sc. (2003) and Ph.D. (2007) degrees in Software Engineering from the University of Western Ontario, Department of Electric and Computer Engineering, London, Canada. His research expertise includes theoretical and engineering foundations of computational intelligence with a special focus on agent-orientation, coordination and cooperation in distributed "systems" environments; Engineering design of agent-oriented, service-oriented (SO), and Grid computing to improve the "quality" of cooperative distributed systems. Application areas include enterprise integration, electronic business and Information gathering. His research has resulted in several publications in world-class conference proceedings. Prior to joining the academia, Dr. AbdulMutalib had more than 14 years of industrial experience. Duties include technical supervision, support and design, and project management.

Assist. Matic Meglič, MD cum lauda is working as Slovene Research Agency Research Fellow at UP PINT, Slovenia, where he is currently finishing his PhD. His research field within eHealth covers novel web based and mobile health care services, patient empowerment and process support for integrated health care and public health. He is a regular presenter or co-author at international conferences (i.e. eHealth, WoHIT, Medicine2.0, EFMI), member of Programme Committee of eHealth2009 as well as editorial and organizational boards of several expert events and publications. He is intensively involved in Slovene national eHealth strategy implementation where he is currently head of Expert Group for National Health Care Portal and member of Health Care Informatics Standardization Board, Telera-diology Council (all at Ministry of Health of the Republic of Slovenia). He is also Cotrugli Business School E-MBA Fellow, CEO of a consulting not-for-profit company and founder of an award winning web2.0 start-up.

Antonio Moreno is a Lecturer at the University Rovira i Virgili's Computer Science and Mathematics Department. He is the founder and head of the ITAKA research group (Intelligent Techniques for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition). His main research interests are the application of agent technology to problems in diverse domains (health care, Tourism) and ontology learning from the Web. He was the coordinator of the Spanish network on agents and multi-agent technology. He has organised several workshops on agents applied in healthcare in the most prestigious international scientific conferences. He has acted as invited editor of special issues in AI Communications, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and IEEE Intelligent Systems, and he has also edited several books.

Costas Mourlas is Assistant Professor in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), Department of Communication and Media Studies since 2002. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Informatics, University of Athens in 1995 and graduated from the University of Crete in 1988 with a Diploma in Computer Science. In 1998 was an ERCIM fellow for post-doctoral studies through research in STFC, UK. He was employed as Lecturer at the Univeristy of Cyprus, Department of Computer Science from 1999 till 2002. His previous research work focused on distributed multimedia systems with adaptive behaviour, Quality of Service issues, streaming media and the Internet. His current main research interest is in the design and the development of intelligent environments that provide adaptive and personalized context to the users according to their preferences, cognitive characteristics and emotional state. He has several publications including edited books, chapters, articles in journals and conference contributions. Dr. C. Mourlas has taught various undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses in the Dept. of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus and the Dept. of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Athens. Furthermore, he has coordinated and activelly participated in numerous national and EU funded projects.

Issam El Naqa received his B.Sc. (1992) and M. Sc. (1995) in Electrical and Communication Engineering from the University of Jordan, Jordan, Ph.D. (2002) in Electrical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA, and M.A. (2007) in Biology Science from Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA. He is currently an assistant professor at the department of Radiation Oncology at Washington University School of medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA. He is a member of IEEE, AAPM, and ASTRO. His current research interests include image processing, pattern recognition, machine learning, biomarkers discovery, and treatment outcomes.

Dr. Wail M. Omar is the dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology at Sohar University-Sultanate of Oman. Dr. Omar is the member from grand research committee in Research Council of Oman. Dr. Omar is reviewer for many journals and international conferences. Dr. Omar is member from the Global Digital Literacy Committee (GDLC) in the United State of America. His research interests are in the field of Grid Computing, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services, Web X, E-Health, Large Scale Enterprise Applications, and monitoring system. Dr. Omar has a Ph.D. in Computing and Software Engineering from Liverpool John Moores University (Liverpool-UK), M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Al Nahrain University (Baghdad-Iraq), and B.Sc. in Electronic and Communication Engineering from Al Nahrain University (Baghdad-Iraq).

Liam Peyton, Ph.D., P.Eng., is a principal investigator for the Intelligent Data Warehouse laboratory and Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa which he joined in 2002 after spending 10 years as an industry consultant and instructor specializing in business process automation, performance management, and software development methodologies. He has degrees from Aalborg University (Ph.D. 1996), Stanford University (M.Sc. 1989), and McGill University (B.Sc. 1984).

J. Puustjarvi obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc degree in computer science in 1985 and 1990, respectively, and his PhD.degree in computer science in 1999, all from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Since 2004 he has been a professor of information society technologies. He is also an adjunct professor of eBussines technologies at the Technical University of Helsinki, and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include eLearning, eHealth, eBussines, knowledge management, semantic web and databases.

L. Puustjarvi obtained her M.Sc degree in pharmacy in 1981, and her professional development exam in community pharmacy in 2005, both from the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has worked in several pharmacies as well as in research groups focusing on medicinal information systems. Currently she is pharmacy owner in Kaivopuisto Pharmacy in Helsinki. In addition, she participates in many medicinal researches and advises thesis focusing on medicinal information systems. Her current research interest includes electronic prescriptions, medicinal ontologies and medicinal information systems.

Giuseppe Riva is Associate Professor of General Psychology and Communication Psychology and Director of the Interactive Communication and Ergonomics of New Technologies — ICE-NET - Lab at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and Head Researcher of the Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory — ATNP-Lab — at the Istituto Auxologico Italiano in Milan, Italy. Riva conducted several researches and published many papers about methods and assessment tools in psychology and about the use of Virtual Reality in medicine and in training. Member of the New York Academy of Science and the American Psychological Association, Riva is also Associate Editor for the journal "CyberPsychology & Behavior" and Content Editor of the "International Journal of Virtual Reality".

Dr. Samaras is currently a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. He was previously at IBM Research Triangle Park, USA and taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (adjunct Assistant Professor, 1990-93). He served as the lead architect of IBM's distributed commit architecture (1990-94) and co-authored the final publication of the architecture (IBM Book, SC31-8134-00, September 1994). He was member of IBM's wireless division and participated in the design/architecture of IBM's WebExpress, a wireless Web browsing system. He co-authored a book on data management for mobile computing (Kluwer A.P, 1997). His work on utilizing mobile agents for Web database access has received the best paper award of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE'99). He has been invited as a program committee member in most conferences and workshops on mobile databases, mobile commerce and mobile computing. He has a number of patents relating to intelligent user interfaces, transaction processing technology and numerous technical conference and journal publications. Prof. Samaras participates in a number of EUs IST projects related to mobile, wireless computing and tiny devices as the Scientific coordinator of the Cyprus participation.

David Sanchez is a Lecturer at the University Rovira i Virgili's Computer Science and Mathematics Department. He is a member of the ITAKA research group (Intelligent Techniques for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition). His research interests are intelligent agents and ontology learning from the Web. He received a PhD on Artificial Intelligence from UPC (Technical University of Catalonia) in 2008.

Sameer Siddiqi is a Research Assistant in the Texas Obesity Research Center in the Department of Health and Human Performance at the University of Houston and Mayoral Intern in the City of Houston Mayor's Office of Health and Environmental Policy. He has been actively involved in the International Health Challenge in Second Life since its inception, and has significantly contributed to and managed various aspects of its development and ongoing execution. He has co-authored a number of works on Second Life and health interventions in peer-reviewed publications, and has received many honors, including the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program Award in 2009.

Daniel Slamanig is a research assistant in the Healthcare Information Technology and Information Security Group at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. He holds a MSc degree in Medical Informatics and is currently a PhD student in computer science in the field of cryptography with the System Security Group at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. His main research interests are applied cryptography and network security and especially cryptographic primitives supporting anonymity and their application in eHealth. He has published numerous papers and articles at national and international conferences and journals. He is a member of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) and the Austrian Computer Society (OCG).

Albert Solé-Ribalta received the Computer Science Engineering degree and Master in Artificial Intelligence degree, from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), in 2007. From 2005 to 2008 he was employed at Universitat Rovira i Virgili as a collaborator professor. From 2006 to 2008, he worked on ITAKA research group where he researched in web based interfaces for multi-agent systems. On 2007, with collaboration of IRCV research group, he published some papers about path planning and robot exploration. On 2008, he received a pre-doctoral research grand from Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He is currently researching in structural and syntactical pattern recognition based on graphs, at "Sistemes Sensorials Aplicats a la Industria" (SSAI) research group with collaboration with Univeristat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC).

Christian Stingl is a Professor for Healthcare Information Technology and Information Security at the School of Medical Information Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria. He received his MSc in Mathematics from the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Subsequently he was a research associate at the University of Klagenfurt where he received his PhD in mathematics in the field of cryptography. After 10 years of international consulting in the field of information systems and being a part time lecturer at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences he became a Professor at this institution. His research interests include health care information systems and especially information security in context of Electronic and Personal Health Records. Dr. Stingl has published numerous articles and papers in national and international journals and peer reviewed conferences in the aforementioned fields.

Mahmood Tara is a physician and a health informatician, graduating from the University of Victoria, Canada. Mahmood is a fan computer application in improving the quality of healthcare services and medical education. He has been involved in research, teaching and the provision of services in health/medical informatics area since 1993, serving in a wide range of positions from computer technical assistant in the School of Medicine (Mashad University of Medical Sciences-MUMS), co-founder and editor of the Journal of Computer in Medicine (MUMS), to team member of the national initiatives toward "the personal health record for all Canadian citizens" (e-Health group of the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada), and to the founder and director of the Biomedical Informatics Department (MUMS). Dr. Tara's main area of research includes quality health system/software design and electronic knowledge provision.

Dr David Topps is a family physician and currently the Director of Clinical Informatics at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. He started at NOSM in 2005, along with the charter students, in the first new medical school in Canada in 35 years. He has been working in medical, educational and clinical informatics for over 20 years. Author of the first peer networked electronic medical record in Canada, with novel features such as automatic problem list generation, he has continued to innovate in clinical informatics, and point of care medicine and education. With a varied background in rural, academic and interprofessional care, he brings a breadth of experience to his teaching and research interests. He has presented widely on communication issues, mobile and ubiquitous computing. His current research includes virtual patients, medical simulation and collaborative care support systems.

Sara Urowitz, PhD is the Manager of Educational Informatics at the Princess Margaret Hospital/University Health Network. She is also Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Her portfolio includes leading a national social networking initiative for cancer survivors, www.CaringVoices.ca, which enables survivors to connect from across the country in real-time and through forums. In addition to providing a platform for peer-to-peer support, Caring Voices, provides barrier free access to health care professionals and community organizations. Dr. Urowitz is currently involved in research that explores providing people with access to elements of their electronic health record, coupled with tailored education information. Her interests are focused on understanding how this type of access can activate people to be participants in their own health and wellness, and its impact on the provider-patient relationship.

Laszlo Zsolt Varga is a senior scientific associate and head of the System Development Department at MTA SZTAKI. He was visiting researcher in CERN and in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London where his research focused on basic and applied research into the development of multi-agent systems. His current research interests include agent, grid and web computing for semantic interoperability in scientific and business applications. He has Ph.D. in informatics from the Electronic Engineering and Informatics Faculty of the Technical University of Budapest. He is steering committee member of the Artificial Intelligence Special Interest Group of the John von Neumann Computing Society.

Dr. Jesús Villadangos holds an M.S. in Physics from the Universidad del Pais Vasco in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Universidad Publica de Navarra in 1999. He is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the same university. His research focus is on distributed algorithms, and the combination of semantic web and software quality. He is member of the ACM.

Liyang Wei received the B.S. and M.S. from Department of biomedical engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an, China) in 1998 and 2001, respectively. She received her Ph.D. from Department of biomedical engineering, Illinois institute of technology (Chicago, US) in 2006. Her research interests include medical image analysis, machine learning, pattern recognition and computer-aided diagnosis.

Dr. David Wiljer is the Director of Knowledge Management and eHealth Innovation for Oncology Education and the Radiation Medicine Program at Princess Margaret Hospital/University Health Network. He is also an Assistant Professor and the Director of Continuing Education in the Department of Radiation Oncology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. David is the founding Chair of a national working group, the Canadian Committee for Patient Accessible Health Records (CCPAEHR), dedicated to involving patients in their EHR. He has led the research, development, implementation and assessment of complex informatics initiatives for cancer care. His work includes an online social networking software, Caring Voices, and Infowell, a portal providing patients access to elements of their health record. David received the Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN) Gold Star Award for his contribution in the field of informatics for patient education.

Yongyi Yang received the B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from Northern Jiaotong University, Beijing, China, in 1985 and 1988, respectively. He received the M.S. degree in applied mathematics and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago, in 1992 and 1994, respectively. Dr. Yang is currently on the faculty of the department of electrical and computer engineering at IIT, where he is a Professor. Prior to this position, He was a faculty member with the Institute of Information Science, Northern Jiaotong University. His research interests are in signal and image processing, medical imaging, machine learning, pattern recognition, and biomedical applications. He is a co-author of Vector Space Projections: A Numerical Approach to Signal and Image Processing, Neural Nets, and Optics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.