This summary focuses on the Q&A session of the HCI+Health conference discussion hosted in June 2024. Overall, we observed that people are excited about this new venue. However there are challenges to consider.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Attracting a broader audience: There’s a desire to include more clinical colleagues and stakeholders beyond HCI and health researchers. Ideas include offering continuing education credits and involving patients in the research process. Reasons to do this were:

• getting research adopted in healthcare settings and finding collaborators.

• making opportunities for students and early career researchers particularly  to participate and present their work, and to network more effectively.

• At the same time, issues about connecting two fields with historically different foci and methods could lead to some challenges. These were:

• defining the scope of “health”: There was an interest in ensuring that a broader definition is used, which may include the following terms: wellness, preventive care, palliative care, just care in general.

• balancing rigor between HCI and health perspectives. We discussed if there was a need to bring in health-type standards of rigor, but the general ethos was to avoid imposing strict rigor requirements initially, yet retain a focus on encouraging good research practices in both HCI and health domains.

• bridging the gap between how HCI and health communities evaluate research, e.g. exploratory design prototypes

To this end, some potential actions for these considerations were discussed:

• including different healthcare specializations, perhaps as a parallel to “industry” track, this could be the “practitioner” track.

• finding ways to calibrate reviewers accordingly

• E.g specific review contributions from specific individuals for papers rather than having people evaluate the whole paper when parts of it fall outside of their expertise

• designing the conference tracks to encourage exposure to different areas of health and HCI, in order to encourage collaboration.

• ensuring the focus isn’t global-north centric

• Other concerns that were aired include:

• Keeping the focus on human-centered design: The conference aims to promote research that integrates technology with a deep understanding of the human experience in healthcare, not just focus on technical advancements.

• Building a lasting community: Ideas include forming a society or association and finding ways to make the conference financially sustainable in the long run.

• Deciding on a publication venue and format: While the link with ACM Health was presented, other structures such as abstracts of published work were also raised.

Overall, the discussion highlights the excitement about creating a new space for HCI+Health research while acknowledging the challenges of building a successful and inclusive conference.

Finally, please volunteer to help make this vision a reality – it can't happen without contributions from across our community!