Aims & Scope
Technology and Health Care is intended to serve as a forum for the presentation of original articles and technical notes, observing rigorous scientific standards. Furthermore, upon invitation, reviews, tutorials, discussion papers and minisymposia are featured. The main focus of THC is related to the overlapping areas of engineering and medicine. The following types of contributions are considered:
- Original articles: New concepts, procedures and devices associated with the use of technology in medical research and clinical practice are presented to a readership with a widespread background in engineering and/or medicine. In particular, clinical cooperation is important and the clinical benefit deriving from the application of engineering methods and devices in clinical medicine should be demonstrated. Typically, full length original contributions have a length of 4000 words, thereby taking duly into account figures and tables.
- Technical Notes and Short Communications: Technical Notes relate to novel technical developments with relevance for clinical medicine. In Short Communications, clinical applications are shortly described. Both Technical Notes and Short Communications typically have a length of 1500 words.
- Reviews and Tutorials (upon invitation only): Tutorial and educational articles for persons with a primarily medical background on principles of engineering with particular significance for biomedical applications and vice versa are presented. The Editorial Board is responsible for the selection of topics.
- Minisymposia (upon invitation only): Under the leadership of a Special Editor, controversial or important issues relating to health care are highlighted and discussed by various authors.
- Letters to the Editors: Discussions or short statements (not indexed).
Specific topics relating to medical and biological engineering within the journal’s scope are:
- Biomedical signal processing
- Medical physics, biomedical imaging and radiation protection
- Bio-micro/nano technologies
- Biomaterials and artificial organs
- Biomechanics, bioelectronics, robotics and minimally invasive surgery
- Cardiovascular, respiratory and endocrine systems engineering
- Neural and rehabilitation engineering
- Molecular, cellular and tissue engineering
- Bioinformatics and computations biology
- Clinical engineering and health technology assessment
- Health informatics, e-health, home health and telemedicine
- Pharmaceutical engineering
- Genetic engineering
- Veterinary engineering
- Metrology in medical measurements
Note: In consideration of the rapid development of medical IT, the description of computer programs, in particular of AI and machine learning procedures, exhibiting screen shots, explicit computer code, etc. is not accepted for publication because of imminent obsoleteness. Likewise, for the same reason, computer-based image or biological signal analysis procedures without demonstration of long-lasting clinical relevance are not suited for publication. Furthermore, the presentation of surveys and questionnaire projects, often with local participation only, is not in agreement with the aims & scope of the journal.
Editorial Board
Editors-in-Chief
Prof. Dr. Matthias Lahner
Joint Center Hilden
Ruhr University Bochum
Hilden, Germany
Email: lahner@gelenkzentrum-hilden.de
Prof. Dr. Almir Badnjevic
Verlab Research Institute
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Email: almir@verlabinstitute.com
Past Editors-in-Chief
Prof. Ali E. Engin, 1999-2005
Prof. em. Peter F. Niederer, 1993-2022
Deputy Editors-in-Chief
Bolanle Asiyanbola
Meharry Medical College
Nashville, TN, USA
Email: basiyan@hotmail.com
Makoto Ohta
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan
Email: ohta@biofluid.ifs.tohoku.ac.jp
Section Editors
Biomechanics
Nenad Filipović
University of Kragujevac
Kragujevac, Serbia
Clinical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Health Information Technologies
Alessio Luschi
University of Siena
Siena, Italy
Clinical Engineering, Health Technology Management, Human Factor Engineering
Ernesto Iadanza
University of Siena
Siena, Italy
Leandro Pecchia
Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Data Science and Medical Image Analysis
Seifedine Kadry
Noroff University College
Oslo, Norway
Dentistry
Saurabh Chaturvedi
King Khalid University
Abha, Saudi Arabia
Julfikar Haider
Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester, UK
Internet of Things, Medical Image Analysis, Health Care 5.0
Chi Lin
Dalian University of Technology
Dalian, China
IoT and Data Science
Georgios Theodoropoulos
Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech)
Shenzen, China
M-health
Melvyn Zhang Weibin
National University of Singapore
Singapore, Singapore
Medical Device Technology
Lejla Gurbeta Pokvić
Verlab Research Institute
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Orthopedics, Arthroscopic Joint Surgery
Wolfram Teske
Ruhr University
Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Public Health, Health Information Systems
Edin Begic
Sarajevo School of Science and Technology
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ram Bhagyalakshmi
PSNA College of Engineering and Technology
Kothandaraman Nagar, India
Editorial Board
Shanmugam Balamurugan
Intelligent Research Consultancy Services
Coimbatore, India
Gerardo Catapano
University of Calabria
Rende, Italy
Marina Carbone
University of Pisa
Pisa, Italy
Mustafa Citak
Helios ENDO Clinic Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany
Sara Condino
University of Pisa
Pisa, Italy
James A. Covington
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Mark Donnelly
Ulster University
Newtownabbey, UK
Garry Duffy
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI)
Dublin, Ireland
David Elad
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel
Juan Fang
Bern University of Applied Sciences
Bern, Switzerland
Irum Feroz
University of Bolton
Bolton, UK
Chiara Giulia Fontanella
University of Padova
Padova, Italy
Chandra Babu Gokulnath
Vellore Institute of Technology
Vellore, India
Joachim Hammer
Regensburg University of Applied Sciences
Regensburg, Germany
Jungsoo Han
Baekseok University
Cheonan, Korea
Petra Hospodková
Czech Technical University in Prague
Prague, Czech Republic
Kenneth J. Hunt
Bern University of Applied Sciences
Bern, Switzerland
Christine Huttin
Aix-Marseille University
Marseille, Belgium
Yizhang Jiang
Jiangnan University
Wuxi, China
Ashish Joshi
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha, NE, USA
Cathal Kearney
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
Dimitris Koutsouris
National Technical University of Athens
Athens, Greece
Gregorij Kurillo
University of California - San Francisco
San Francisco, CA, USA
Adam Liebert
Polish Academy of Sciences
Warsaw, Poland
Dieter Liepsch
Munich University of Applied Sciences
Munich, Germany
Paul Peter Lunkenheimer
University Hospital Muenster
Muenster, Germany
Peter Manser
ETH Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
Maria Maddalena Marrapodi
University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"
Naples, Italy
Zlatko Matjacic
University Rehabilitation Institute
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Matjaz Mihelj
University of Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Marina Milosevic
University of Kragujevac
Kragujevac, Serbia
Giuseppe Minervini
University of Campania ''Luigi Vanvitelli'
Naples, Italy
Hamidreza Namazi
Monash University Malaysia
Selangor, Malaysia
Stanislav Polzer
Technical University of Ostrava
Ostrava, Czech Republic
Christopher Pulliam
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH, USA
Vladimir Rogalewicz
Czech Technical University in Prague
Prague, Czech Republic
Jude P.J. Savarraj
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Houston, TX, USA
Amulya K. Saxena
Imperial College London
London, UK
Kai-Uwe Schmitt
AGU Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
Ayush Singhal
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN, USA
Min Soon Kim
University of Missouri School of Medicine
Columbia, MO, USA
Ling Sun
Zimmer Inc.
Warsaw, IN, USA
Nirmalya Thakur
Emory University
Atlanta, GA, USA
Mohy Uddin
King Saud bin Abdul Aziz University for Health Sciences
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Kelvin Yeung
The University of Hong Kong Medical Centre
Hong Kong, China
Yudong Zhang
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK
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REFERENCES
Authors are requested to use the Vancouver citation style. Place citations as numbers in square brackets in the text. All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references at the end of the manuscript. List the references in the order in which they appear in the text. Only articles published or accepted for publication should be listed in the reference list. Submitted articles can be listed as (author(s), unpublished data). If an article has a DOI, this should be provided after the page number details. The number is added after the letters 'doi'. Manuscripts will not be considered if they do not conform to the Vancouver citation guidelines.
Examples of the Vancouver style:
[1] Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002; 935(12): 406.
[2] Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.
[3] Berkow R, Fletcher AJ, editors. The Merck manual of diagnosis and therapy. 16th ed. Rahway (NJ): Merck Research Laboratories; 1992.
[4] Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGrawHill; 2002. p. 93113.
[5] Canadian Cancer Society [homepage on the Internet]. Toronto: The Society; 2006 [updated 2006 May 12; cited 2006 Oct 17]. Available from: www.cancer.ca/.
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Open Access
By default, articles published in Technology and Health Care are available only to institutions and individuals with access rights. However, the journal offers all authors the option to purchase open access publication for their article as part of the IOS Press Open Library. This means that the final published version will be freely available to anyone worldwide, indefinitely, under a Creative Commons license and without the need to purchase access to the article. This is also referred to as “gold” open access.
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Peer Review Policy
Technology and Health Care is a peer-reviewed journal. Articles submitted to the journal undergo a single-blind peer review process. This means that the identity of the authors is known to the reviewers but the identity of the reviewers is not communicated to the authors. Please visit our reviewer guidelines for further information about how to conduct a review.
After automatic plagiarism screening through iThenticate, all submitted manuscripts are subjected to initial appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief and, if found suitable for further consideration, to rigorous peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees. Reasons to reject a paper in the pre-screening process could for example be that the work does not fall within the aims and scope, the writing is of poor quality, the instructions to authors were not followed or the presented work is not novel.
Papers deemed suitable to be reviewed will be assigned to a handling editor. The handling editor will then invite reviewers to comment on the work and might consider inviting the reviewers suggested by the author(s). Editors and reviewers are asked to excuse themselves from reviewing a submission if a conflict of interest makes them unable to make an impartial scientific judgment or evaluation. Conflicts of interest include but are not limited to: collaboration with the authors in the past three years; any professional or financial affiliations that may be perceived as a conflict of interest; a history of personal differences with the author(s).
As a standard policy, decisions are based on two reviews, in some specific circumstances one review may be deemed sufficient to make a decision on a paper. The Editors-in-Chief strive to ensure a typical turnaround time of 3 months.
Reviewers are asked to judge a paper on at least:
- Logical, concise ordering of ideas
- Use of sound research methods
- Adequacy of documentation
- Material has good applied use in the field
- Readability and interest level
Based on the received reviews the handling editor will propose to the Editors-in-Chief a recommendation:
- Accept article as submitted
- Accept article revision by the author according to suggestions made in review
- Revise and resubmit
- Reject
- Consider for another issue/publication
They mean the following:
- The manuscript is suitable for publication and only requires minor polishing; thus, no further reviews are requested.
- The authors are required to make moderate changes to their manuscript. The manuscript becomes acceptable for publication if the changes proposed by the reviewers and editors are successfully addressed. The revised manuscript will be examined by the Editors-in-Chief and possibly sent back to all (or a selection of) reviewers for a second round of reviews. Authors are requested to provide a letter to the reviewers detailing the improvements made for the resubmission.
- In its current form, the manuscript is not suitable for publication. A resubmission would require substantial revisions and is only encouraged in special cases. The resubmitted manuscript will be considered as a new submission.
- The manuscript is rejected as it is deemed to be out of scope, not relevant, or not meeting the journal’s quality standards in terms of significance, novelty, and/or presentation.
- The manuscript is rejected as it is deemed to be better suited for a different journal or publication.
Authors are notified by the Editors-in-Chief, whose decision is final.
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