Journal Special Issues

Health Informatics Journal (SAGE)

Health Data Lifecycle Management: Quality, Interoperability and Governance

Rationale and Background

This Special Issue originates from the 39th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS 2026), held between 3-5 June 2026 in Limassol, Cyprus (https://2026.cbms-conference.org/), a leading international venue for research at the intersection of medicine and computing. Authors of high-quality papers presented at CBMS 2026 relevant to health data quality, interoperability and governance are invited to submit substantially extended and revised versions of their work. The Special Issue will also be open and the collection will reflect the broadest possible view of current research in the field.

Aims and Scope

Modern healthcare increasingly depends on data that moves through a long and complex lifecycle: it is generated at the point of care or by connected devices, collected and curated, stored and integrated across systems, shared for clinical and research purposes, reused for secondary analysis and AI model development, and eventually archived or retired. At every stage of this lifecycle, three challenges recur: ensuring the quality and trustworthiness of the data, achieving semantic and technical interoperability across heterogeneous systems and standards, and applying governance frameworks that protect patients while enabling responsible reuse. Developments such as the European Health Data Space (EHDS), FAIR data principles, and the growing demand for high-quality, bias-aware datasets to train clinical AI models have made health data lifecycle management a defining challenge for digital health and medical informatics research.

Keywords

Health data quality · Data interoperability · Health data governance · Digital health · Health data lifecycle management · FAIR health data

Indicative Topics

  • Data quality assessment: methods, metrics and benchmarking for clinical and research datasets
  • Semantic and technical interoperability standards (HL7 FHIR, openEHR, SNOMED CT, LOINC, DICOM)
  • Health data governance frameworks, policies and stewardship models
  • Privacy-preserving data management, federated learning and secure multi-party computation for health data
  • FAIR and AI-ready health datasets; data documentation and provenance
  • European Health Data Space (EHDS) implementation and comparable national/regional data-sharing infrastructures
  • Clinical data warehousing, data lakes and secondary use of electronic health records
  • Data lineage, traceability and auditability across the health data lifecycle
  • Longitudinal and real-world data integration from multiple sources (EHRs, registries, wearables, imaging)
  • Ethical, legal and regulatory considerations for health data reuse (GDPR and related frameworks)
  • Bias, representativeness and fairness in datasets used to train medical AI systems
  • Case studies and lessons learned from national or regional health data infrastructures

Guest Editors

  • Prof. Panagiotis D. Bamidis (Lead Guest Editor)
    Laboratory of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece
    Email address: bamidis[a]auth.gr
  • Assist. Prof. Evdokimos Konstantinidis
    Laboratory of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece
    Email address: evdokimosk[a]auth.gr
  • Dr. Antonis Billis
    Laboratory of Medical Physics and Digital Innovation, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece
    Email address: ampillis@med.auth.gr
  • Dr. Eleni Dafli
    School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece
    Email address: eledaf[a]auth.gr

Key Dates

      • Call for Papers issued: August 2026
      • Abstract submission deadline (optional, encouraged): 30 September 2026
      • Full manuscript submission deadline: 31 October 2026
      • Peer review and revisions: November 2026 – February 2027
      • Target publication: Early 2027

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts must be prepared and submitted in accordance with the journal’s standard author guidelines, available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/jhi. All submissions will undergo the journal’s standard double-blind peer review process. Please select the appropriate Special Issue category when submitting via the journal’s online submission system.

Contact

Enquiries about the Special Issue may be directed to the Lead Guest Editor: Prof. Panagiotis D. Bamidis
Email address: bamidis[a]auth.gr