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Feature issue of Biomedical Optics Express

Optical Technologies for Improving Healthcare in Low-Resource Settings

Submission Opens:1 July 2019

Submission Deadline: 1 November 2019

Biomedical Optics Express welcomes submissions to a feature issue on "Optical Technologies for Improving Healthcare in Low-Resource Settings." This issue will focus on emerging research on novel optical technologies aimed at meeting healthcare needs in resource-constrained environments. This will address challenges in global health as well as other resource-constrained environments including rural, emergency, disaster response, and military settings.

In view of the rising costs of healthcare and increasing priority on value-based healthcare, the need for affordable technologies is growing significantly. In addition, pressing healthcare challenges in the global arena demand biomedical solutions that meet the constraints of low-resource settings. Optical technologies have the potential to provide attractive solutions to many of these problems. The guest editors plan to especially encourage researchers in low-resource settings such as India, Nicaragua, and various places in Africa. As a result of these interactions, this issue is expected to portray the importance of global health research to the scientific community.

Areas of focus will include meeting needs with optical technologies that enable cost-effective, easy-to-use, battery-powered, portable, remotely administrable, and/or point-of-care solutions. Successful initiatives in low-resource settings that exploit affordable technologies are particularly of interest to foster new and exciting collaborations among scientists, medical doctors, and nurses.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Low-cost optical components
  • Low-cost analytical tests (e.g., blood, urine, body fluids, molecular diagnostics)
  • Low-cost imaging and microscopy
  • Algorithms and software for low-cost processing of optical data
  • Optical design
  • Optofluidics
  • Optics for global health
  • Optics for rural health
  • Optics for addressing health disparities
  • Optical systems that deskill healthcare procedures
  • Smartphone-based imaging and sensing
  • Wearable optoelectronics for disease diagnosis and treatment
  • Optical technologies for emergency and disaster-relief environments

All submissions need to present original, previously unpublished work and will be subject to the normal standards and peer review processes of the journal. The standard Biomedical Optics Express Article Processing Charges will apply to all published articles.

Please prepare manuscripts according to the author instructions for submission to Biomedical Optics Express and submit through OSA's electronic submission system, specifying from the drop-down menu that the manuscript is for the Feature Issue on Optical Technologies for Improving Healthcare in Low-Resource Settings

Feature Editors

Audrey Bowden, Vanderbilt University, USA (Lead Editor)

Nicholas Durr, Johns Hopkins University, USA

David Erickson, Cornell University, USA

Aydogan Ozcan, UCLA, USA

Nimmi Ramanujam, Duke University, USA

Paulino Vacas Jacques, Pabellón de Arteaga Institute of Technology, Mexico