Approximately 15 minute walk to Hawaii Convention Center

For a long time, sleep researchers have asked why we sleep and what are the physiological and mental needs which require sleep. Today we understand that sleep is important for productivity, health, cognition, and well-being. As a consequence, physical recreation, hormone secretion, immune systems, memory functions, and mood are all related to sufficient and restorative sleep. Thus a good sleep quality is essential. As biomedical engineers, we would like to quantify this ultimate 'sleep quality'. But how can we assess this? This had been a subject of discussion in a recent issue of IEEE Pulse as well.

During the past few decades the research field on sleep expanded rapidly following the exploding development of sleep medicine. Sleep medicine began with research on drugs that help put us to sleep and help make us wide awake. With the recognition of distinct and highly prevalent disorders, such as sleep apnea, the field developed much further. The publication of the latest classification and coding manual in 2014, the third edition of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD-3) by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), defined and provided severity criteria for 66 distinct sleep disorders [3]. Assessment starts with complaints about not sleeping, insomnia, or excessive sleepiness, hypersomnolence, or adverse or odd events during sleep.

In view of this, what is the main road block to quantifying sleep quality? It is that we do not have a psychological and physiological justified scientific definition for sleep quality. And because sleep quality is not well related to sleep disorders, or in other words, it only reflects one aspect of sleep disorders, sleep medicine has not taken efforts to define sleep quality more than the questionnaires and scales given so far.

Where can we go with quantifying sleep quality? Can technology help us? Today, with the 'quantifying yourself' movement everywhere, assessment of sleep quality raises new and wide interest. Sleep researchers and sleep physicians should not ignore this interest and awareness. Instead our discipline should realize this opportunity and should try to explain subjective components of sleep quality and objective impairments. This is accessible by simple tools such as assessment of sleep duration, sleep disturbance, misbehavior prior to sleep such as strong exercise or excessive meals or drinking. As a discipline we can give advice about appropriate sleep duration (at least 7 hours) and appropriate behavior regarding sleep, as recently published [4]. Comping back to physiology, this is urgently required because sleep is not an autonomous function like the heartbeat, but is half autonomous and half behavior. We do need good quality sleep and we have to prepare ourselves (and the sleep environment) to get good quality sleep.

We are asked to make a lot of decisions about our health these days. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is changing healthcare. Experts are predicting rapid growth in IoMT adoption. Thus, the industry needs to prepare to harness the technology for value-based care. However, health systems confront challenges, such as security, interoperability, and analytics to meet their promise of helping expand access to care, improve quality, and reduce cost.

The workshop on Internet of Medical Things focuses on Internet of Things technologies for healthcare. The event is a good opportunity to bring together practitioners and researchers from both academia and industry. The aim is to have a forum for discussion and technical presentations on the recent advances in theory, application and implementation of the IoT and IoE concepts in the healthcare domain. The workshop consists of one a day meeting. The program includes theoretical lectures and encompasses various spin off subject of IoMT.

In our first interview, we spoke with Dr. Paul Sajda, co-chair of IEEE Brain Initiative and Professor of biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, and radiology at Columbia University.

Deadline Date Changes:

• Two and four-page papers to the LSC has been extended to June 18, 2018
• Special Sessions and Tutorial proposal submissions have been extended to June 25, 2018

The IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) is a scientific conference dedicated to mathematical, algorithmic, and computational aspects of biological and biomedical imaging, across all scales of observation. It fosters knowledge transfer among different imaging communities and contributes to an integrative approach to biomedical imaging. ISBI is a joint initiative from the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). The 2019 meeting will be held in Venice, Italy and will include tutorials, challenges and a scientific program composed of plenary talks, invited special sessions, as well as oral and poster presentations of peer-reviewed papers.