Human-Computer Interaction in Health and Wellness: Research and Publication Opportunities

In this introduction, we address three distinct aspects of the special issue topic “human-computer interaction (HCI) in health and wellness”. First, we assess the trajectory of HCI research in health topics in top HCI journals during the 1995-2012 period. We then contrast this overall publication trajectory with the health sector component of gross domestic product (GDP)—applied as a proxy measure of social need— across seven countries that are top producers of HCI research. Second, we describe how one can use the human-technology innovation framework to understand the range of settings in which HCI research in health topics can be conducted. Grounded in this framework, we propose a structure to categorize health related HCI publication and to identify gaps in this research. Third, we apply the proposed structure to categorize and introduce five papers chosen to represent the special issue topic.