Open Access

The workshop aims to discuss leading edge contributions to the interdisciplinary research area of ambient intelligence (AmI) applied to the domains of telemedicine and driving assistance. AmI refers to human centered environments attributed with sensors. The development of AmI in the two application domains of the workshop shares several commonalities: the extensive usage of networked devices and sensors, the design of artificial intelligence algorithms for diagnosis, including recommendation systems and qualitative reasoning or the application of mobile and wireless communication to their distributed systems. Together with the presentation of common aspects of Ambient Intelligence, a further goal of the workshop is to stimulate synergies among both application domains and present examples. The telemedicine domain can benefit from methodologies in designing complex devices, real-time conform system design, audiovisual or computer vision system design used in automotive driving assistance. Furthermore, the automotive domain can benefit from the usercentric view, biometric sensor data design, multi-user data bases for aggregation and diagnosis using big data like used in telemedicine. The German Government supports these research lines in its Hightec-Strategie under the domains “Health and Nutrition” and “Climate and Energy”. In Spain the term “Spanish Program for R&D Challenged Oriented Society – Challenge in energy safe, efficient and clean & Challenge in sustainable transport, smart and integrated” is used. Scientific contributions to the event are peer-reviewed by a suited program committee having members from Germany and Spain. The same committee is serving the JARCA workshop (Jornadas sobre Sistemas cualitativos y sus Aplicaciones en Diagnosis, Robótica e Inteligencia Ambiental - Conference on Qualitative Systems and their Applications in Diagnoses, Robotics and Ambient Intelligence) since 15 years. This workshop is sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) under contract number 57070010.

Prevention and treatment of common and widesprea (chronic) diseases is a challenge in any modern Society and vitally important for health maintenance in aging societies. Capturing biometric data is a cornerstone for any analysis and Treatment strategy. Latest advances in sensor technology allow accurate data measurement in a non-intrusive way. In many cases, it is necessary to provide online monitoring and real-time data capturing to support patients´ prevention plans or to allow medical professionals to access the current status. Different communication standards are required to push sensor data and to store and analyze them on different (mobile) platforms. The objective of the workshop is to show new and innovative approaches dedicated to biometric data capture and analysis in a non-intrusive way maintaining mobility. Examples can be found in human centered ambient intelligence attributed with sensors or even in methodologies applied in automotive real-time conform mobile system design. The workshop´s main challenge is to focus on approaches promoting non-intrusiveness, reliable prediction algorithms and high user-acceptance. The workshop will provide overview presentations, Young researcher poster tracks, doctoral tracks and classical peer-review full paper tracks. Especially, would like to encourage students and young researchers to participate and to contribute to the workshop. Scientific contributions to the event are peer-reviewed by a suited program committee.

Long-term animal studies are needed to accomplish measurements of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for medical diagnostics. In order to analyze the time course of VOCs, it is necessary to ventilate these animals. Therefore, a total of 10 male Sprague–Dawley rats were anaesthetized and ventilated with synthetic air via tracheotomy for 24 h. An ion mobility spectrometry coupled to multi-capillary columns (MCC–IMS) was used to analyze the expired air. To identify background contaminations produced by the respirator itself, six comparative measurements were conducted with ventilators only. Overall, a number of 37 peaks could be detected within the positive mode. According to the ratio peak intensity rat/ peak intensity ventilator blank, 22 peaks with a ratio >1.5 were defined as expired VOCs, 12 peaks with a ratio between 0.5 and 1.5 as unaffected VOCs, and three peaks with a ratio <0.5 as resorbed VOCs. The peak intensity of 12 expired VOCs changed significantly during the 24 h measurement. These results represent the basis for future intervention studies. Notably, online VOC analysis with MCC–IMS is possible over 24 h in ventilated rats and allows different experimental approaches.

The number of publications in the field of breath analysis using different types of ion mobility spectrometers (IMS) has increased over the last few years. In this paper, the publications between 2010 and 2013 are reviewed with respect to different types of IMS such as differential mobility spectrometers, high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometers and multi-capillary columns coupled to conventional IMS. The analytes detected by IMS and declared with significance to a specific medical question were considered further with respect to medical and analytical questions. In total, 42 different analytes were found to be detected using IMS on a high significance level and were compared to findings using other analytical methods with respect to the individual analyte.

This paper investigates the possibility to effectively monitor and control the respiratory action using a very simple and non invasive technique based on a single lightweight reduced-size wireless surface electromyography (sEMG) sensor placed below the sternum. The captured sEMG signal, due to the critical sensor position, is characterized by a low energy level and it is affected by motion artifacts and cardiac noise. In this work we present a preliminary study performed on adults for assessing the correlation of the spirometry signal and the sEMG signal after the removal of the superimposed heart signal. This study and the related findings could be useful in respiratory monitoring of preterm infants.