Impact Factor
2024
1.4
CiteScore
2024
2.1

Volume

32, 6 issues

Latest issue

32:6 online 08 November 2024

Next issue

33:1 scheduled for January 2025

Back volumes

From volume 1, 1993

ISSN print

0928-7329

ISSN online

1878-7401

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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

Author Guidelines

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT

By submitting my article to this journal, I agree to the Author Copyright Agreement, the IOS Press Ethics Policy, and the IOS Press Privacy Policy.

Authors are requested to submit their manuscript electronically to the journal’s editorial management system. Authors may include a positive and negative list of possible reviewers in the cover letter of their submission.

Publication fee
When an article is accepted for publication, authors are required to pay a publication fee of €500/$500. A waiver request for the publication fee should be submitted before the initial submission of a paper.

Artificial intelligence policy
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s ChatGPT and Generative AI Policy. Please go to: Artificial Intelligence Policy | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

Changes to authorship
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s Authorship Policy.  Please go to:  Authorship guidelines | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

Required files for final submissions
After the article has been accepted, the authors should submit the final version as source files, including a word processor file of the text, such as MS Word or LateX (If using LaTeX, please use the standard article.sty as a style file and also send a PDF version of the LaTeX file).

Open access option
The IOS Press Open Library offers authors an open access (OA) option. By selecting the OA option, the article will be freely available from the moment it is published, also in the pre-press module. In the Open Library the article processing charges are paid in the form of an OA fee. Authors will receive an order form upon acceptance of their article. OA is entirely optional.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Organization of the paper and style of presentation
Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors whose native language is not English are advised to consult a professional English language editing service or a native English speaker prior to submission.

Manuscripts should be prepared with wide margins and double spacing throughout, including the abstract, footnotes and references. Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc., should be numbered. However, in the text no reference should be made to page numbers; if necessary, one may refer to sections. Try to avoid the excessive use of italics and bold face.

Manuscripts should be organized in the following order:

  • Title page
  • Body of text (divided by subheadings)
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Tables
  • Figure captions
  • Figures

Headings and subheadings should be numbered and typed on a separate line, without indentation. SI units should be used, i.e., the units based on the metre, kilogramme, second, etc.

Title page
The title page should provide the following information:

  • Title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long)
  • Name(s) of author(s); please indicate who is the corresponding author
  • Full affiliation(s)
  • Present address of author(s), if different from affiliation
  • Complete address of corresponding author, including e-mail address
  • Abstract
  • Keywords (Please provide 4-7 keywords. Keywords should be terms from the MeSH database)

Abstract
The abstract should be clear, descriptive, self-explanatory and not longer than 200 words, it should also be suitable for publication in abstracting services. The abstract for research papers should follow the “structured abstract” format. Section labels should be in bold uppercase letters followed by a colon, and each section will begin on a new line.

BACKGROUND:
OBJECTIVE:
METHODS:
RESULTS:
CONCLUSIONS:

Materials and methods

Ethical considerations
IOS Press has adopted Sage’s Publication ethics policies.  Please go to:  
Publication ethics and research integrity: policy guidelines for authors | SAGE Publications Ltd for details.

Data sharing policy
All relevant data that were used or produced for conducting the work presented in a paper is encouraged to be made FAIR and compliant with the PLOS data availability guidelines prior to submission. See in particular the list of recommended data repositories. (We might provide our own data availability guidelines in the future, but we borrow the excellent PLOS guidelines for now.) In a nutshell, data have to be made openly accessible and freely reusable via established institutions and standards, unless privacy concerns forbid such a publication. In any case, metadata have to be made publicly accessible and visible.

Supplementary data can be submitted and should be included within the manuscript after the figures and tables (or after the references). Each supplementary item should have a legend and should not exceed the file size of 10 MB. A short description of the supplementary items should be included under the header Supplementary Material within the manuscript before the References. Large datasets should be hosted on the author's own or institute's website or in an appropriate database, and should be properly cited within the manuscript.

Reporting guidelines
Manuscripts should adhere to the EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines relevant to the research design.

Acknowledgments
Specify the acknowledgements. If there are none, you can still include this section and insert "The authors have no acknowledgments".

Conflict of interest
Statement of any potential conflicts should be clearly identified at the end of the paper. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, you must still include this section and insert the following statement: "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest."

Funding
Specify sources of funding. If there are none, you can still include this section at the end of the paper and insert "The authors report no funding".

Figures
Number figures as Fig. 1, Fig 2, etc. and refer to all of them in the text.
Each figure should be provided on a separate sheet. Figures should not be included in the text.
Color figures can be included in the print version, provided the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author. The online version has no extra charges for color figures.

For the file formats of the figures please take the following into account:
- line art should be have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi, save as EPS or TIFF
- grayscales (including photos) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (no lettering), or 500 dpi (when there is lettering); save as tiff
- do not save figures as JPEG, this format may lose information in the process
- do not use figures taken from the Internet, the resolution will be too low for printing
- do not use color in your figures if they are to be printed in black & white, as this will reduce the print quality (note that in software often the default is color, you should change the settings)
- for figures that should be printed in color, please send a CMYK encoded EPS or TIFF
Figures should be designed with the format of the page of the journal in mind. They should be of such a size as to allow a reduction of 50%

On maps and other figures where a scale is needed, use bar scales rather than numerical ones, i.e., do not use scales of the type 1:10,000. This avoids problems if the figures need to be reduced.
Each figure should have a self-explanatory caption. The captions to all figures should be typed on a separate sheet of the manuscript.
Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity.

Tables
Number as Table 1, Table 2 etc, and refer to all of them in the text. Each table should be provided on a separate page of the manuscript. Tables should not be included in the text. Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title. Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead. Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table.

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/.

Footnotes
Footnotes should only be used if absolutely essential. In most cases it is possible to incorporate the information in the text. If used, they should be numbered in the text, indicated by superscript numbers and kept as short as possible.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright of your article
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that they have read and agreed to the terms of the IOS Press Author Copyright Agreement.

Article sharing
IOS Press adopted Sage’s Article Sharing Policy from 8th of July 2024. 
Please go to:  Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines | SAGE Publications Ltd for details. If your manuscript was submitted prior to 8th of July 2024, please contact editorial@iospress.nl with details of your enquiry.

PROOFS AND PRE-PRESS

The corresponding author will receive a PDF proof and is asked to check this proof carefully (the publisher will execute a cursory check only). Corrections other than printer's errors, however, should be avoided. Costs arising from such corrections will be charged to the authors.

The corrected proof is published online in the journal’s pre-press module and is indexed by PubMed where it appears as [Epub ahead of Print]. This is not the final version. When the article is published in an issue, the final published version replaces the pre-press file. Pre-press articles are fully citable by using their DOI number.

PURCHASES

How to order reprints, a PDF file, journals, or IOS Press books
The corresponding author of a contribution to the journal will receive a complimentary PDF Author’s Copy of the article, unless otherwise stated. This PDF copy is watermarked and for personal use only. A free PDF copy will not be provided for conference proceedings and abstract issues. An order form for a PDF file without watermark, reprints or additional journal copies will be provided along with the PDF proof.

An author is entitled to 25% discount on IOS Press books. See Author's discount (25%) on all IOS Press book publications.

KUDOS

Authors of published articles (non-prepress, final articles) will be contacted by Kudos. Kudos is a service that helps researchers maximize the impact and visibility of their research. It allows authors to enrich their articles with lay metadata, add links to related materials and promote their articles through the Kudos system to a wider public. Authors will receive no more than three emails: one invitation and a maximum of two reminders to register for the service and link the published article to their profile. Using and registering for Kudos remains entirely optional. For more information, please have a look at our authors section.

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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.

Gold open access pricing
Authors who choose gold open access publication will be subject to an article publication charge of €1500 / US$1500 for publication under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license or €2150 / US$2150 for publication under the CC BY 4.0 license. Pricing is exclusive of possible taxes. After an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be informed regarding the open access option during the production stages, and will have the opportunity to purchase open access for their article. It could be that the open access fee of an article is waived completely due an institutional agreement IOS Press has with the corresponding authors' institution. Please check the institutional agreements page for details.

Green open access
Authors who do not make use of the gold open access option may still make their article freely available using self-archiving, also referred to as green open access. Authors may make their final accepted manuscript available for free download from their personal or institutional website or institutional archive. This model is free for the author.

PubMedCentral deposits
This journal deposits all open access articles in PubMedCentral (PMC) as part of the IOS Press Open Library. If an author chooses to publish their paper with open access then the publisher will deposit the article in PMC upon publication.

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:

  1. Accept article as submitted
  2. Accept article revision by the author according to suggestions made in review
  3. Revise and resubmit
  4. Reject
  5. Consider for another issue/publication

They mean the following:

  1. The manuscript is suitable for publication and only requires minor polishing; thus, no further reviews are requested.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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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This journal supports IOS Press' actions relating to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and commits to the Diversity and Inclusion Statement.

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