pHealth 2022 is the 19th conference in a series of scientific events which brings together expertise from medical, technological, political, administrative, and social domains, and even from philosophy and linguistics. It opens a new chapter in the success story of this series of international conferences on wearable or implantable micro and nano technologies for personalised medicine.

Started in 2003 as a dissemination activity in the framework of a European project on wearable micro and nano technologies for personalised health with personal health management systems, pHealth conferences have evolved to become truly interdisciplinary and global events. All aspects of pHealth are comprehensively represented in the conference series, which also covers technological and biomedical facilities, legal, ethical, social, and organisational requirements and impacts, as well as the basic research necessary to enable future-proof care paradigms. It has advanced from P medicine as personalised medicine through P2 medicine, which also addresses prevention, P3 medicine with the inclusion of prediction, P4 medicine, where the patient is included as an active participant in the process, up to the current P5 medicine: personalised, participative, preventive, predictive, precision medicine. In that context, the conference series attracts experts from many scientific domains, including mathematics, data sciences, system sciences, philosophy, ethics and social sciences, as well as developers and practitioners from various technologies, medical and health disciplines, legal affairs, politics, and administration from all over the world. The 2022 conference brought together health-service vendor and provider institutions, payer organisations, government departments, academic institutions, professional bodies, as well as patients and citizen representatives.

Smart mobile systems, such as microsystems, smart textiles, smart implants, sensor-controlled medical devices, and innovative sensor and actuator principles and techniques, as well as related body, local and wide-area networks up to cloud services, have become important enablers for telemedicine and ubiquitous pervasive health as the next-generation health services, while social media and gamification have added another dimension to pHealth as an eco-system.

The OECD has defined four basic areas which must be managed in the new care model: address the big data challenges; foster meaningful innovation; understand and address the potential new risks; and support concerted effort to un-silo communities for a virtual care future. The benefits of pHealth technologies for all stakeholder communities, including patients, citizens, health professionals, politicians, healthcare establishments, and companies from biomedical technology, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications domains, offers enormous potential, not only for the improvement of medical quality and industrial competitiveness, but also for managing healthcare costs.

The pHealth 2022 conference benefits from the experience and lessons learned by the organising committees of previous pHealth events, particularly 2009 in Oslo, 2010 in Berlin, 2011 in Lyon, 2012 in Porto, 2013 in Tallinn, 2014 in Vienna, 2015 in Västerås, 2016 in Heraklion, 2017 in Eindhoven, 2018 in Gjøvik, 2019 in Genoa, 2020 in Prague, and 2021, again in Genoa. The 2009 conference introduced the idea of having special sessions focusing on a particular topic and organised by a mentor or moderator. The Berlin event in 2010 initiated pre-conference workshops on particular topics prior to the main event. Lyon, in 2011, launched so-called dynamic demonstrations, allowing participants to show software and hardware solutions on the fly without the need for a booth. Implementing pre-conference events, pHealth 2012 in Porto gave attendees a platform for presenting and discussing recent developments and provocative ideas, which helped to animate the sessions. The highlights of pHealth 2013 in Tallinn were the special session on the success stories of European projects, and also the presentations on the newest paradigm changes and challenges associated with Big Data, analytics, translational and nano medicine, etc. Vienna in 2014 focused on lessons learned from international and national R&D activities, and practical solutions, particularly those from Horizon 2020, the new EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. Besides reports about technology transfer support and building ecosystems and value chains to ensure better time to market and higher impact of knowledge-based technologies, the acceptability of solutions, especially with regard to security and privacy aspects, were presented and discussed in depth. pHealth 2015, in Västerås, addressed mobile technologies, knowledge-driven applications and computer-assisted decision support, and also apps designed to support the elderly and chronic patients in their daily, and possibly independent, living. The fundamental scientific and methodological challenges of adaptive, autonomous, and intelligent pHealth approaches, the new role of patients as consumers and an active party with growing autonomy and related responsibilities, as well as requirements and solutions for mHealth in low- and medium-income countries have been also considered. The pHealth 2016 conference in Heraklion aimed at the integration of biological and medical data and the deployment of mobile technologies through the development of micro-nano-bio smart systems. The emphasis was on personalised health, virtual care, precision medicine, big bio-data management and analytics. The pHealth 2017 event in Eindhoven provided an inventory of the former conferences, summarising requirements and solutions for pHealth systems, highlighting the importance of trust, and the new focus on behavioural aspects in the design and use of pHealth systems. One specific aspect addressed was the need for flexible, adaptive and knowledge-based systems, as well as decision intelligence. pHealth 2018 in Gjøvik established national and European satellite workshops, complementing the more theoretical consideration of the majority of the papers with organisational and practical experiences. Borrowing from the good experiences of former events, pHealth 2018 responded to the national and regional needs to advance healthcare systems and their services to citizens and health professionals. pHealth 2019, in Genoa, put a special emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and their deployment for decision support. In that context, ethical challenges and related international manifests were discussed in depth. pHealth 2020, organised in Prague as virtual event, addressed AI and robots, bio-data management and analytics for health and social care, security, privacy and safety challenges, integrated care, and also the intelligent management of specific diseases including the Covid-19 pandemic. pHealth 2021, in Genoa, once again organised as a virtual event focused on digital health ecosystems in transformation. Thereby, the deployment of mobile technologies, micro-nano-bio smart systems, bio-data management and analytics, autonomous and intelligent systems, as well as the Health Internet of Things (HIoT) for personalised health, systems medicine, public health and virtual care especially have been considered. The 2022 edition of the pHealth conference series combines the former organisational schemes towards a hybrid event in Oslo. The conference marks the conclusion of the ten year period during which Bernd Blobel has served as Chair of the pHealth SPC and the pHealth Steering Committee, and summarises the evolution that has occurred during this time. Consequently, pHealth 2022 focuses on personalised, preventive, predictive, participative precision (P5) medicine and the integration and interoperability between health informatics standards, but also on practical experiences with the deployment of HL7 FHIR. The conference also addresses new potential risks for security and privacy, as well as safety opportunities and challenges, trustworthiness of partners and processes, and the motivation and empowerment of patients in the care processes. The multilateral benefits of pHealth technologies – including artificial intelligence, learning systems, intelligent robots, etc. – for all stakeholder communities offer enormous potential, not only for the improvement of medical quality and industrial competitiveness, but also for the management of healthcare costs and, last but not least, for improving patient experiences.

The conference is organised under the patronage of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Gjøvik, and in particular the eHealth and Welfare Security group at the Center for Cyber and Information Security (CCIS) and the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology (IIK), which, together with the Research Council of Norway, also partially funds this event. In addition, the Norwegian Research Center in Oslo provides the venue for the meeting. Following a long-standing tradition, the Working Groups “Electronic Health Records (EHR)”, “Personal Portable Devices (PPD)”, “Security, Safety and Ethics (SSE)”, and “Translational Health Informatics” of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) have also been actively involved in the preparation and realisation of the pHealth 2022 event.

This proceedings volume covers 2 Keynote Papers, 10 Invited Papers, 20 Full Papers, and 4 Poster Papers from 113 authors from 23 countries all around the world. All submissions have been carefully and critically reviewed by at least two independent experts from a country other than the author’s home country, and additionally by at least one member of the Scientific Programme Committee. This very selective process guaranteed the high scientific level of the accepted and ultimately published papers. The editors are indebted to the internationally acknowledged and highly experienced reviewers for having essentially contributed to the quality of the conference and the book at hand.

Neither the pHealth 2022 Conference nor the publication of the pHealth 2022 Proceedings by IOS Press would have been possible without the pecuniary and spiritual supporters and sponsors. These also include the Research Council of Norway and the Center for Cyber and Information Security (CCIS) of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) and standards-developing organisations such as HL7 International, ISO/TC215 or CEN/TC251.

The editors are also grateful to the members of the international Scientific Programme Committee, and especially the dedicated efforts of the Local Organising Committee members and their supporters for their careful preparation and smooth operation of the conference.

Bernd Blobel, Bian Yang, Mauro Giacomini

(Editors)