Welcome to pHealth 2008!

Personalized health records, wearable sensors, genetically engineered therapies and other emerging technologies are offering unprecedented opportunities for improving health care outcomes.

A growing number of citizens desire to be better informed about and empowered with technologies for personal health care. Many clinicians and researchers recognize the need for new methodologies in assessing the comparative effectiveness of personalized health technologies.

Old Dominion University in Virginia and Regensburg University Medical Center in Germany are jointly organizing an international conference to discuss recent advances and strategic needs in personalized health (pHealth) care and to foster collaboration between industry and academia.

Goals:

The specific goals of the conference are:

1. To explore the potential of new personalized health technologies in supporting self-care and personal health;

2. To assess the availability of healthcare knowledge, including comparative effectiveness, needed for effective personalized health;

3. To review commercial opportunities for trans-Atlantic collaborations;

4. To develop recommendations for best practices in personalized health care.

Outcome:

The conference will produce a white paper and a journal special issue, which will be edited by members of the scientific program committee. The white paper is intended to be a set of practical recommendations.