Envisioning the Future of Interactive Health

Workshop held in conjunction with CHI 2025.

This workshop will gather the health and well-being (henceforth "Health") research community to prepare and kickstart an independent conference. While there is substantial research at the intersection of HCI and Health, there is not yet a SIGCHI-sponsored conference dedicated to the HCI and Health community. The workshop will bring together the broad community of academic and industry researchers across Human-Computer Interaction, medical informatics, health informatics, and digital health. This widespread Health community also brings diverse approaches to epistemology and research, requiring that we work towards defining the scope, audience, and methods that will establish a shared language while welcoming areas of growth. This workshop will be an opportunity for the fledgling community to start important discussions around what constitutes a contribution for the Health community. 

Submissions

In preparing for the future Interactive Health conference, we invite two types of submissions:

• Posters are for presenting innovative, ongoing research. We especially encourage those that could benefit from feedback for future work. Examples include pilot studies or early-stage interactive systems in areas like consumer health, diagnostics, public health, or care technologies. Authors will present through a poster session.

• Provocations should reflect on impactful HCI & Health work or lessons learned from successful or rejected papers. We aim to understand both significant or exemplary HCI & Health contribution, as well as learn from why certain papers were not considered acceptable. The goal is to articulate and discuss aspects of the academic work that are desirable for this proposed venue. 

Both will be selected for quality, with provocations additionally assessed for topical diversity and representation. We encourage authors to submit papers with up to four pages in the ACM Master Template, including references and figures, although other formats will be considered. Submissions should be sent to interactivehealthchi25@gmail.com.  They should not be anonymized.

The mentoring program will pair junior scholars with senior mentors during off-site lunches. These may focus on specific research topics, PhD study challenges, career options, and self-development. To express interest in the mentoring program, please fill out this Google form.

See also the complete workshop description.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: February 13th, 2025

• Notification of Acceptance: February 28th, 2025

• Shareable submission: March 7th, 2025

• Online workshop pre-session: March 27th, 2025 (will be open for all, regardless of participation at the workshop)

• CHI 2025 Early Registration Deadline: April 5th 2025

• Workshop at CHI: April 27th 2025

All dates are AOE (Anywhere on Earth).

Post Workshop Plans

Following the workshop, we will document and use the mailing list to share the key insights gained during the event, focusing on critical topics such as the evolution of interactive health research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and methodological challenges, to connect with online workshop participants and the overall community. We plan to write a public-facing article to summarize the discussions and outcomes from the workshop, highlighting the perspectives of the HCI & Health community. 

The insights will further be relayed to the Interactive Health conference steering committee, who will further review these insights and incorporate the feedback into the calls and organization structure for the first Interactive Health conference in 2026, should it be approved by SIGCHI.

Plans to Publish

We aim to publish an article reporting on the workshop through accessible channels such as Interactions magazine or CHI Medium. Additionally, all accepted poster and provocation submissions will be made available on HAL, a French-led open-access archive to ensure that the content is freely accessible and preserved for future research and community engagement.

Workshop Agenda 27th April 2025

• 08:30-09:00 Arrivals

• 09:00-09:15 Welcome & Ice Breaker

• 09:15-10:00 Envisioning Activity 1: Exploring challenges of an HCI & Health conference

• 10:00-10:20 Groups report back

• 10:20-10:30 Break

• 10:30-11:30 Envisioning Activity 2: Provocation presentations in breakouts 

• 11:30-12:00 Groups report back

• 12:00-14:00 Lunch & Mentoring Program

• 14:00-15:00 Envisioning Activity 3: Exploring the questions: What is and what is not a valid interactive health contribution?

• 15:00-15:40 Research Activity 2: Posters and Coffee 

• 15:40-16:00 Presentation of Vision for Future HCI & Health conference 

• 16:00-16:40 Questions and Discussion

• 16:40-17:00 Closing Remarks

• 17:00-17:30 Organizers meeting to discuss organization of future conference (SC, volunteers)

Evening: Optional Group Dinner

Pre-Workshop Online Session

We plan to run a 2.5-hour online session one month before the workshop. This session is open to everyone and it will consist of  "Envisioning Activity 1: Exploring challenges of an HCI & Health conference". The goal is to gather feedback on the three key challenges from attendees who are unlikely to attend in person, to ensure input from as wide a range of researchers as possible. The reflections shared online will be presented at the in-person workshop. Invitations will be sent to the sigchi-health@listserv.acm.org mailing list. Please subscribe to the mailing list for updates. 

Organisers

Ignacio Avellino, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, INSERM, ISIR

Patricia Pei-Yi Kuo, National Tsing Hua University

Pin Sym Foong, National University of Singapore

Jason Wiese, University of Utah

Helena M. Mentis, Drexel University

Sean Munson, University of Washington

James R. Wallace, University of Waterloo

Aneesha Singh, University College London

Andrew D. Miller, Indiana University Indianapolis

Daniel A. Epstein, University of California, Irvine

Francisco Nunes, Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS