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Objectives: The availability of internet-connected mobile, wearable and ambient consumer technologies, direct-to-consumer e-services and peer-to-peer social media sites far outstrips evidence about the efficiency, effectiveness and efficacy of using them in healthcare applications. The aim of this paper is to describe one approach to build a program of health informatics research, so as to generate rich and robust evidence about health data and information processing in self-quantification and associated healthcare and health outcomes.Methods: The paper summarises relevant health informatics research approaches in the literature and presents an example of developing a program of research in the Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre (HaBIC) at the University of Melbourne. The paper describes this program in terms of research infrastructure, conceptual models, research design, research reporting and knowledge sharing.Results: The paper identifies key outcomes from integrative and multiple-angle approaches to investigating the management of information and data generated by use of this Centre's collection of wearable, mobiles and other devices in health self-monitoring experiments. These research results offer lessons for consumers, developers, clinical practitioners and biomedical and health informatics researchers.Conclusions: Health informatics is increasingly called upon to make sense of emerging self-quantification and other digital health phenomena that are well beyond the conventions of healthcare in which the field of informatics originated and consolidated. To make a substantial contribution to optimise the aims, processes and outcomes of health self-quantification needs further work at scale in multi-centre collaborations for this Centre and for health informatics researchers generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Questions like 'How is your health? How are you feeling? How have you been?' now can be answered in a different way due to innovative health self-quantification apps and devices. These apps and devices generate data that enable individuals to be informed and more responsible about their own health.Objectives: The aim of this paper is to review studies on health SQ, firstly, exploring the concepts that are associated with the users' interaction with and around data for managing health; and secondly, the potential benefits and challenges that are associated with the use of such data to maintain or promote health, as well as their impact on the users' certainty or confidence in taking effective actions upon such data.Methods: To answer these questions, we conducted a comprehensive literature review to build our study sample. We searched a number of electronic bibliographic databases including Scopus, Web of Science, Medline, and Google Scholar. Thematic analysis was conducted for each study to find all the themes that are related to our research aims.Results: In the reviewed literature, conceptualisation of health SQ is messy and inconsistent. Personal tracking, personal analytics, personal experimentation, and personal health activation are different concepts within the practice of health SQ; thus, a new definition and structure is proposed to set out boundaries between them. Using the data that are generated by SQS for managing health has many advantages but also poses many challenges.Conclusions: Inconsistency in conceptualisation of health SQ - as well as the challenges that users experience in health self-management - reveal the need for frameworks that can describe the users' health SQ practice in a holistic and consistent manner. Our ongoing work toward developing these frameworks will help researchers in this domain to gain better understanding of this practice, and will enable more systematic investigations which are needed to improve the use of SQS and their data in health self-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A record of twenty years of productive scientific output is a substantial achievement in any field of ICT, and especially in the youthful domain of health informatics. The Health Informatics Society of Australia, with the active support and involvement of the Australasian College of Health Informatics, is justifiably proud to have sustained the annual Australian National Health Informatics Conference (HIC) series of meetings through to this stage of maturity. As the largest national event of this type in Australia and New Zealand, with a dedicated scientific stream on health informatics, HIC provides a valued platform for academic and research contributions and interchange. It also consolidates the Australasian profile of strong and current research contributions in health informatics, marking our place on the world stage. The HIC 2012 theme of 'Health Informatics: Building a Healthcare Future Through Trusted Information' emphasises the importance of assuring the integrity and security of health data and communications. At a time when large scale health information flows are being initiated, through both the inauguration of the personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) and the National Broadband Network rollout, these issues need to remain prominent in the minds of designers and developers as well as the priorities of administrators and executives. They are naturally a major concern for consumers, and an immutable responsibility for vendors. A more trusted environment for managing and using health information will help to consolidate and accelerate the use of health informatics solutions as change mechanisms to drive the establishment and adoption of new models of care and new technology-oriented healthcare processes. Papers in this volume will be found to both align with this theme, and to add colour to the landscape within which it resides by addressing peripheral but related topics. As always, it is a strength of HIC that a wide diversity of work is presented, and that a set of papers has been collected here that ranges from deeply theoretical to intensely practical. The careful reader will be rewarded with exposure to much diversity, and many elements of contemporary health informatics research endeavours. The double blind peer review process established for HIC 2011 in a previous volume has been continued and augmented. All papers were reviewed by either 3 or 4 experts in the field of health informatics, selected as prominent academic and industry specialists. The assistance of the Australasian College of Health Informatics in supporting this processes through the voluntary efforts of a number of their Fellows is gratefully acknowledged, as is the similar contribution made by many senior members of the Health Informatics Society of Australia. This phase of reviewing resulted in the provisional acceptance of 38 papers from a much expanded submission field of 61 (compared with 39 for HIC 2011). The Scientific Program Committee, composed of several previous Scientific Program Chairs of past HIC conferences, then undertook a validation process for all such papers that were resubmitted in amended form, to ensure that reviewers' recommendations were appropriately addressed or rebutted. This resulted in 35 papers finally being included for publication in this book. Anthony J. Maeder Fernando J. Martin-Sanchez [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competing Interests: Disclosure The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Objectives: To reflect on the recent rise of Digital Medicine, as well as to analyse main research opportunities in this area. Through the use of several examples, this article aims to highlight the new role that Biomedical Informatics (BMI) can play to facilitate progress in research fields such as participatory and precision medicine. This paper also examines the potential impact and associated risks for BMI due to the development of digital medicine and other recent trends. Lastly, possible strategies to place BMI in a better position to face these challenges are suggested., Methods: The core content of this article is based on a recent invited keynote lecture delivered by one of the authors (Martin-Sanchez) at the Medical Informatics Europe conference (MIE 2015) held in Madrid in May 2015. Both authors (Lopez-Campos and Martin-Sanchez) have collaborated during the last four years in projects such as the ones described in section 3 and have also worked in reviewing relevant articles and initiatives to prepare this talk., Results and Conclusions: Challenges for BMI posed by the rise of technologically driven fields such as Digital Medicine are explored. New opportunities for BMI, in the context of two main avenues for biomedical and clinical research (participatory and precision medicine) are also emphasised. Several examples of current research illustrate that BMI plays a key role in the new area of Digital Medicine. Embracing these opportunities will allow academic groups in BMI to maintain their leadership, identify new research funding opportunities and design new educational programs to train the next generation of BMI scientists.