Health Informatics in the Age of COVID-19

Dear Colleagues,

The advent of COVID-19 has significantly influenced health informatics research. Especially mobile apps have had to be developed in record time, new developments for the healthcare systems have had to be implemented in many countries, while at the same time regulatory requirements have become more stringent in many parts of the world. Above all, the topic of improved interoperability was identified as a key requirement to develop sustainable solutions during the COVID-19 era. Only if data can be quickly evaluated and compared between different institutions and modalities, we are able to technically deal with demands of a pandemic, like COVID-19.

Telemedicine solutions also needed to be improved in many places in a very short time, for example, to provide psychotherapy on at least the same scale as before COVID-19. Furthermore, modern data science methods to cope with the generated volumes of data that were generated during COVID-19 in a comparatively short time were required as well. In particular, offering suitable visualization methods for medical data was a huge demand. For example, COVID-19 dashboards were demanded by healthcare professionals and governmental institutions to monitor intensive care unit cases. Many more examples and fields of health informatics research could be mentioned. Therefore, we would like to use this Special Issue to call for articles on solutions that have emerged specifically during and because of COVID-19.

• Interoperability (Standards, Solutions, Obstacles, Case Reports, etc.)
• Digital Processes and Procedures (Process Documentation, Process Optimization, etc.)
• Application of Artificial Intelligence Methods (Machine Learning, Data-driven Decision Support, etc.)
• Telemedicine (mHealth, eHealth, etc.)
• Visualization of Medical Data (Dashboards, etc.)
• Data Collection in situ (Multi-modal Data Fusion, Ecological Data like Ecological Momentary Assessments, etc.)
• Data Processing (Smart Devices, Sensors, Data Acquisition, Data Curation, Collection Procedures, ETL, Data Quality, etc.)
• Data Set Descriptions (including big data sources like Twitter, Facebook etc.)
• Data Privacy and Protection (including regulatory aspects of different countries, GDPR, etc.)
• Use Cases (Mental Health, Contact Tracing, etc.)

Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss
Dr. Marc Schickler
Dr. Felix Beierle
Prof. Dr. Johannes Schobel
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Data is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.