IEEE OPEN JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death and disability in Europe, causing approximately 10,000 deaths every day and nearly 4 million deaths annually across the WHO European Region. It is a complex clinical syndrome associated with impaired heart function, poor quality of life for patients and high healthcare costs. It is important to develop, validate and implement the artificial intelligence (AI) and modelling based, Decision Support System (DSS) for assessing and predicting the risk of cardiovascular disease, its early diagnosis and progression. It is necessary to use: 1) patient-specific data i.e. demographic, clinical, genetic, lifestyle and socio-economic, 2) an AI-based digital patient library and algorithms for risk stratification, early diagnosis, and disease progression, and 3) a highly innovative multifunctional AI-based and computational modelling DSS for informing a patient-centred, personalised, prevention and treatment strategies.
AAI2026 conference aims to create a collaborative platform for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to exchange information on the latest developments in artificial intelligence. The conference emphasizes fostering research connections, encouraging authors to showcase the benefits of information technologies across sectors. Innovative research ideas focused on utilizing artificial intelligence to solve problems, whether in R&D or real-time applications, are highly welcomed. We also encourage submissions of papers detailing advanced prototypes, systems, methodologies, tools, techniques, and comprehensive survey papers that outline future research directions.
This Special Issue will focus on research targeting at the development of such AI-powered models and digital twins for personalized healthcare particularly in cardiovascular disease. The issue will follow the organization of the Minisimposium Artificial Intelligence for Heart Failure Detection and Risk Stratification Using Diverse Data Sources to be held within the The Fifth Serbian International Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI2026). The special issue will be comprised of extensions of some of the best works announced in the workshop, along with papers submitted within the open call, taking also into account the target audience of the OJEMB journal.