B3:    Improving user acceptance of health telematics systems : what are the technological and human issues related to user friendliness?

Ilias Iakovidis PhD is a Scientific Officer, European Commission: Information Society Programme - Applications relating to Health who received the BSc from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1984 and PhD from Texas Tech University in 1990 in applied mathematics with a thesis on inverse problems in electrocardiography. From 1990 to 1993 he was a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering of University of Montreal and research associate at the Montreal Heart Institute. In 1993 he joined European Commission in Brussels, Belgium where he is presently responsible for planning and monitoring of research in the area of health telematics. Presently he is in charge of internal group and activities targeting healthcare professionals as well as the promotion and coordination of international cooperation. Current research interests and responsibilities include issues related to electronic health record systems and to human computer interaction. He is a visiting faculty in several graduate courses on health telematics and has published over 40 articles in journals, books and conference proceedings. He is a member of the advisory and editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine and editor of a book series on health telematics.

Professor Constantine Stephanidis is Head of the Human Computer Interaction and Assistive Technology Laboratory at the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, and is a member of the Faculty at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Crete. For many years, he has been engaged, as Prime Investigator, in pioneering research work, partly funded by the European Commission. In 1995 he introduced the concept of "User Interfaces for All" as a socio-technical goal in the context of the Information Society. He also introduced a new technical framework for achieving this goal - a method and an accompanying set of tools that support the development of "Unified User Interfaces" facilitating universal access and usability of emerging interactive products, applications and services. Prof. Stephanidis has published about 200 technical papers in scientific archival journals and proceedings of international conferences related to his fields of expertise. He serves on the Editorial Board of several scientific journals and the Programme Committee of many international conferences. He has organized many international scientific conferences, workshops, seminars, and panels. Prof. Stephanidis is the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer international journal "Universal Access in the Information Society" and the Editor of the LEA book "User Interfaces for All - Concepts, Methods and Tools". He is the Founding Chair of the International Conference "Universal Access in Human Computer Interaction", Founder of the ERCIM Working Group "User Interfaces for All" and General Chair of its annual Workshop. He is also the Founding Chair of the International Scientific Forum "Towards an Information Society for All". Prof. Stephanidis is currently member of the Executive Committee and member of the Board of Editors of the European Research Consortium for informatics and mathematics (ERCIM), member of the Advisory Committee of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Head of the W3C Office in Greece, and participant in the W3C - Web Accessibility initiative.