External Event - 13th Jun 2018
Haptic Technologies for Healthcare is a one-day workshop to be held as part of the Eurohaptics 2018 conference.
It will be held on Wednesday, June 13, 2018 in Pisa, Italy.
For more information about the Eurohaptics conference and registration (required for all workshop attendants) see the conference website: www.eurohaptics2018.org.
Recent technologies allow for novel classes of wearable and holdable devices that make use of forms of haptic communication and interaction that go beyond elementary uses such as simply attracting attention. This can give rise to an expanded design space that raises many research issues, as this workshop will explore.
Haptic technologies which communicate or interact via the sense of touch have the advantage of being more discreet and more body-centric than other modalities traditionally used for user interaction and can enhance or substitute for other sensory channels. The haptic sense can be used in situations of perceptual deficits (e.g. due to health-related conditions), or oversaturation due to environmental demands on other senses. Notifications and even complex messages can be mediated haptically to health professionals and patients, prompting them to perform an action, reminding them for a forgotten action or conveying instructions for a different path of action.
The goal of this workshop is to spark interest in the topic of haptic technologies for healthcare, with a specific focus on using haptic technologies for assisting, enhancing and extending current practices, both in the hospital and home setting.
The workshop is open to students, researchers, engineers, clinical and rehabilitation practitioners, and industry experts interested in research issues raised by novel or complex haptic interactions for wearable and holdable devices for healthcare. We will provide ample opportunity for round-table discussions where speakers and workshop participants will be encouraged to propose questions, identify issues and raise challenges for designers and researchers.
Participants are asked to submit an extended abstract (see Submissions page for details) by April 30th, 2018. Extended abstracts may describe ongoing work, recent results, case studies, techniques or novel approaches related to the workshop topic. Demonstrations and presentations of prototypes are strongly encouraged.
