Recent technological advances in engineering and communications technologies have paved the way for a new generation of embedded wireless devices, promising exciting new possibilities along many fronts. Although still in is its infancy, the technology holds great potential for a significant impact on next generation ubiquitous and pervasive health care.

Today, hospitalized patients are tethered to instrumentation, even though some attention has been given to highly customized, high-cost wireless devices.  Instances of un-tethered, wireless devices have been few in number, but advances in bioengineering, biochemistry and biotechnology hold the promise of an ever-expanding pool of knowledge in this emerging discipline. Moreover, with the continued advanced in microchip technology, more and more functionalities are  being placed on smaller and smaller chips, paving the way for  wireless devices to be implanted within the body and operate at the molecular level. This technology will simplify testing, monitoring and treatment, while also improving patient quality of life by minimizing time spent in the hospital, and enabling automatic, un-tethered and continuous treatment of chronic conditions.

The realization of the next generation ubiquitous and pervasive healthcare systems is a challenging task, as these systems area likely to involve a complex structure consisting of various devices, ranging from resource-constrained sensors and actuators to complex multimedia devices, supporting time critical applications. This is further compounded by cultural and socio-economical factors that must be addressed for next generation healthcare systems to be widely diffused and used. An understanding of these factors is essential and will have a direct impact on the system and security models required to cause users to embrace and adopt the new technology. These models must capture not only the perceived value of the new technology and its ease of use, but most importantly the perceived risk of using this technology.

UbiCare’06 is intended to serve as a working forum for scientists, researchers, engineers, practitioners, standard developers and policy makers to discuss and exchange their experiences, new ideas, techniques, best practices and research results. The principal theme of the UbiCare’06 is the development of high integrity software, secure protocols, and trustworthy systems, applications and devices for next generation ubiquitous and pervasive healthcare systems.

A special session will be dedicated to Lab-on-a-Chip, Microfluidics, Biosensors and Microarrays.