The last decade has seen a huge explosion of health-related human centered computing research and practice focused on wellness (e.g., good nutrition and exercise promotion) to help people avoid needing medical care. And while Health Informatics may appear to be the obvious home for these activities, it is a discipline that has focused on the design and evaluation of systems to process healthcare data and through that aid in patient treatment. Given the ubiquity of wellness systems we think its time to create a Wellness Informatics community of researchers and practitioners, and through this define opportunities and challenges in the design and evaluations of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) that help people stay well.

Photo by Mike Baird, Creative Commons License