Advancing Digital Transformation in Health and Care: Harnessing the Power of Computable Knowledge 

Globally, health and care services need transformational change in productivity, quality and safety. Digital technology (including artificial intelligence) must be wisely designed and implemented to support the required transformation.

One key component that demands more attention in policy and funding decisions is computable knowledge, vital for education, clinical decision making, patient communication and operational efficiency.

This conference is solely in-person and organized under the BCS Faculty of Health and Care. It will address current progress and issues in the development and deployment of computable knowledge in UK health and care.

Call for papers

We invite brief, focused abstracts describing current work to manage and mobilise computable knowledge in UK health and care. All submissions will be independently peer-reviewed and priority will be given to abstracts that best fit the mission of MCBK and the specific themes listed below. We plan to offer selected submissions ten minutes to present at the conference. Accepted abstracts will be published in the open access journal Learning Health Systems with no charge (so please follow this example, including referencing style). The conference reserves the right to accept some abstracts for publication but not for presentation, and vice versa, subject to the volume and quality of submissions. We can accept submissions from authors outside the UK, but the topic of the abstract must relate to UK development, implementation or evaluation of computable knowledge in health or care.

The submission deadline is 5.00pm on Wednesday, 30 April 2026.

Please use this form to provide an abstract of between 300-500 words (including references, maximum four) describing the content of your proposed talk along with author information and the thematic area(s) addressed. You must structure the abstract under four section headings: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions. We will reject any submissions that do not conform to the requirements given here or that are seriously deficient in writing quality.

Submitted abstracts must relate to the concept of computable knowledge as described in the MCBK Manifesto and fit into at least one of the following thematic areas:

1.      Learning health systems.

2.      Synergy of expert systems and generative AI.

3.      Governance, policy and safety.

4.      Standards, interoperability and metadata.

5.      Technical infrastructure.

6.      Knowledge creation and curation.

7.      Real-world implementation and evaluation.

8.      Education.

Authors will be notified of acceptance decisions by 15 May 2026. Conference attendance is free of charge. Any accepted abstracts that are not presented at the conference due to non-attendance will not be published.

Registration will open later in April 2026. The full programme including guest speakers will be announced shortly.