Motivation behind the workshop series The business of health service delivery is a complex one. Employing over 850,000 people, and delivering services to 21.3 million residents, the Australian healthcare system is currently struggling to deal with increasing demand for services, and an acute shortage of skilled professionals. The National eHealth Strategy drives a nationwide agenda to provide the infrastructure and tools required to support the planning, management and delivery of health care services. National initiatives such as the National Health Reform Program, the National Broadband Network, and the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record are accelerating the use of information and communication technologies in delivering healthcare services. The Australasian Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (AI) provide an excellent opportunity to bring together artificial intelligence researchers who are working in health research. Driven by a senior program committee comprising distinguished faculty from several Australian universities including Griffith University, the University of New South Wales, University of Newcastle, University of Western Sydney, and Macquarie University, and specialist health research organisations including the CSIRO Australian e-Health Research Centre, the Artificial Intelligence in Health workshop series was created in 2011 to bring these researchers together as part of Australia's premier Artificial Intelligence conference.
kind to bring together scholars and practitioners nationally in the field of
research, share their knowledge and experiences, define key research challenges and explore possible collaborations to advance e-Health development nationally and internationally. The workshop was co-located with the 24th
2011 workshop were also invited to revise and submit their manuscripts for inclusion in a special issue of the Australasian Medical Journal. Of these, seven papers and a letter to the editor were published in the special issue in
3
held in conjunction with the 25th Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial
papers went through a rigorous review process. Of these, 6 full papers and 3 short papers have been accepted for presentation in the workshop and for publication in these CEUR proceedings. The workshop will also feature three keynote addresses and a panel discussion on the topic “AI in Health: the 3
each to students who were first authors of accepted papers. A best paper prize of $250 will also be awarded on the workshop day. Both prizes have been sponsored by the CSIRO Australian e-Health Research Centre.
reformat their papers for publication in a special issue of the Australasian
4 4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
5
asian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2012). This workshop series would not have possible without their support. We would also like to thank the Workshop Chair of AI 2012, Hans Guesgen, for organising the workshops and championing these CEUR workshop proceedings.