DH

Welcome to the 7th International Conference on Digital Health (www.acm-digitalhealth.org), supported by UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction and held in-cooperation with ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) in London, UK on 2-5 July, 2017.

Building on the growing success of previous editions (ehealth 2008 in London, 2009 in Istanbul, 2010 in Casablanca and ehealth 2011 in Malaga) and two editions of the International Workshop on Public Health in the Digital Age (1st PHDA 20113 and 2nd PHDA 2014), the 5th and 6th Digital Health conference was colocated with the World Wide Web conference in 2015 in Florence and in 2016 in Montreal. Digital Health has become a prime interdisciplinary international venue proudly bringing together frontline public health professionals, global health experts and computer science researchers in data mining, crowdsourcing and Big Data analysis for public health surveillance. Following the successful publication strategy, DH 2017 proceedings are included in the ACM Digital Library.

This year DH 2017 is a standalone event in London, sponsored by the UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. The move has worked out superbly - DH 2017 attracted the highest number of paper submissions, ensuring growing scientific quality of the event and growing interest from NGOs, industry, start-up innovators and charitable sector. As we also expanded the remit to cover digital solutions for emergencies and humanitarian health, the seventh DH 2017 promises to deliver the highest quality and diversity programme since its foundation.

We are excited about the great keynotes in store this year, including Dr Oliver Morgan from the WHO who will deliver a talk on public health emergencies and data to save lives, Dr Tina Comes of the University of Delft speaking about designing Humanitarian Technology and Dr Paul Chong of IBM Watson discussing a joint project with Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust - the 'cognitive hospital'. Three strategic panels chaired by leading international experts in the domain will discuss the role of funding (chaired by Prof Michael Arthur, UCL provost), the future of digital imaging and microscopy (chaired by Dr Isaac Bogoch) and the role of data sharing for emergencies (chaired by Dr Michael Edelstein).

We have a great academic programme including 13 full papers, 18 short papers, 6 extended medical abstracts, 29 posters and 7 demonstrators, and 11 abstracts from PhD students - plus a confirmed line-up of industry and healthcare speakers. We have also introduced a bespoke session for the SME and start-up sector bringing world class innovators together to discuss the path to success, challenges and lessons learned to inspire the new generation of innovators. The Digital Health Innovation Award - offering recognition to companies in several categories - was launched in collaboration with the Digital Catapult, UK.

For more up-to-date information, 'follow' and 'like' DH 2017 on social media: Twitter: @digihealthconf (hashtag: #DH2017) Facebook: www.facebook.com/ACMDigitalHealth