AI and Health: AI enabling methods, systems and applications for healthcare, biomedicine and population health
Important Dates
Author information and Full paper submission deadline (including Appendix and resubmission information): January 19, 2026
(all times are 23:59 Anywhere On Earth, UTC-12)
Submissions are solicited for the IJCAI 2026 Special Track on AI and Health. The Special Track invites original, high-quality submissions addressing the design, development, deployment, and evaluation of artificial-intelligence methods, systems, and applications for healthcare, biomedicine, and population health. In particular, this track welcomes work that goes beyond straightforward applications of existing AI techniques, and instead pushes advances in models, learning paradigms, system integration, interpretability, safety, ethics, and deployment in real-world healthcare settings. This track intersects the thematic scope of clinical decision support, knowledge-based/agent systems, medical image & signal analysis, computational intelligence in biomedicine, and other AI-driven innovations in health.
Primary Paper Initiative: IJCAI-ECAI 2026 is launching the Primary Paper Initiative in response to the international AI research community’s call to address challenges and to revitalize the peer review process, while strengthening the reviewers and authors in the process. Under the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 Primary Paper Initiative, every submission is subject to a fee of USD 100. That paper submission fee is waived for primary papers, i.e., papers for which none of the authors appear as an author on any other submission to IJCAI-ECAI 2026. The initiative applies to the main track, Survey Track, and all special tracks,excluding the Journal Track, the Sister Conferences Track, Early Career Highlights, Competitions, Demos, and the Doctoral Consortium. All proceeds generated from the Primary Paper Initiative will be exclusively directed toward the support of the reviewing community of IJCAI-ECAI 2026. To recognize the reviewers’ contributions, the initiative introduces Peer Reviewer Recognition Policy with clearly defined standards (which will be published on the conference web site). The initiative aims to enhance review quality, strengthen accountability, and uphold the scientific excellence of the conference. Details and the FAQ will be published on the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 website.
The Special Track AI 4 Health, in alignment with the goals of IJCAI, does not focus solely on AI applications to healthcare problems. Rather, it aims to promote original, significant, and critical AI-enabled technologies that advance both domain-specific and general-purpose methodologies, technologies, and software applications at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare.
We welcome contributions that advance the frontier of AI for Health through:
- Strong novelty in methods, algorithms, or theories rooted in AI and computer science;
- Demonstrated or potential high impact in medical or healthcare domains;
- Rigorous evaluation in real or near-real healthcare settings.
Submissions that apply existing AI techniques to healthcare scenarios without significant methodological innovation or generalisability may be desk-rejected. The track seeks research that not only solves healthcare problems but also enriches the AI research landscape with new paradigms, techniques, or frameworks that are valuable beyond a single application case.
Topics of Interest
We solicit papers on, but not limited to, the following topics:
- AI Methods for Clinical Decision Support, Diagnosis, Prognosis & Treatment Planning
- Knowledge-based, Agent-based, or Hybrid AI Systems in Medicine & Healthcare
- Automated reasoning and meta-reasoning in clinical domains
- Explainable, trustworthy, fair, robust, and privacy-preserving AI for healthcare
- New computational platforms and learning paradigms (e.g., federated learning, self-supervised learning, continual learning)
- AI-based modelling and optimisation of healthcare pathways and clinical guidelines
- Machine learning and data science for medical, biological, and healthcare data (EHRs, time series, omics, wearables)
- Data mining and analytics for biomedical knowledge discovery
- Intelligent exploitation of heterogeneous and multimodal clinical data sources
- Computational intelligence in biomedicine and medically-oriented human biology
- Natural language processing for clinical and biomedical texts
- Large Language Models (LLMs) and Foundation Models in Medicine
- Medical knowledge representation and reasoning (ontologies, knowledge graphs, neuro-symbolic AI)
- AI-driven medical image and biosignal analysis (segmentation, classification, reconstruction, multimodal fusion)
- Intelligent medical devices, instruments, and embedded AI systems
- Telehealth, remote monitoring, and mobile AI in digital health
- AI for personalised and precision medicine (e.g., genomics, phenotyping, treatment individualisation)
- AI-enabled drug discovery, pharmaco-informatics, and treatment optimisation
- Healthcare operations, management, and resource scheduling
- AI for public health, epidemiology, and population-level modelling
- Deployment, evaluation, and translation of AI systems into clinical practice (real-world validation, human-AI collaboration, usability)
- AI in medical and healthcare education
- Ethical, legal, philosophical, and societal implications of AI in medicine (e.g., regulatory compliance, alignment with the EU AI Act)
(Authors are encouraged to clearly highlight the novelty of the AI contribution, the relevance for health/medicine, and the validation/impact of the work.)
Selection Process
Research papers are submitted with the same format and general instructions as for the main conference (https://2026.ijcai.org/ ); there will be no rebuttal phase. In the backdrop of the thematic focus of the special track, the technical reviewing process will proceed as follows for every eligible paper fulfilling the mandatory submission requirements:
- Papers will be first checked for relevance and compliance with respect to the themes and focus areas of the AI and Health special track. If a paper is not considered relevant to the special track, it will not undergo a full peer review and be marked as “Out of scope’’. Also note that “out of scope” papers cannot be transferred to the technical track or other tracks at IJCAI -ECAI 2026 (therefore, please carefully determine the suitability of your paper for the AI and Health track vs. the general main track).
- Papers declared `in-scope’ or fitting to the theme and focus of the special track will undergo a peer-review and will be evaluated based on aforestated criteria,and general aspects such as novelty and originality of ideas, correctness, clarity, and the significance of results, potential impact and quality of the presentation etc.
!! Important !! – Results of both `in-scope’ and `out of scope’ papers will be announced to contributing authors only at the end of the overall review period. By submitting a paper, submitted authors would acknowledge that they are aware of this process, and that under no circumstance would the authors receive any indication of the status of their paper till the final notification deadline.
Submission site (open 10th December 9:00 CET time)
Papers should be submitted to https://chairingtool.com/conferences/IJCAIECAI2026/ai-and-health?role=author
Multiple Submissions: Each author, be it first or otherwise, is limited to authorship in exactly one submission as part of the AI and Health special track; submissions not meeting this requirement will be disqualified. The list and ordering of authors registered at the paper submission deadline is final.
Submission Details: The paper title, author names, contact details, and a brief abstract must be submitted electronically through the paper submission site by the applicable deadline for the special track.
AI and Health Track Motivation Statement: During the submission, authors will be required to include a brief (text-only) motivation statement describing why their work is fitting for the AI and Health special track (e.g., as opposed to the general IJCAI 2026 technical track) and the manner in which the authors believe their work addresses the themes and methodological focus of the AI and Health track. Please consult the submission system in good time to learn about this requirement and get an overall sense of the information required. In this context, authors will also be required to explicitly provide information about the inter/multidisciplinary nature of their research (if applicable), concretely describing the nature of the scientific collaboration being reported as well as the scientific background of the contributing authors themselves.
Paper Length and Formatting: Papers must be no longer than 9 pages in total: 7 pages for the body of the paper and 2 pages for references. Papers not conforming to this requirement will be desk-rejected. The formatting is to be made as per the templates available for IJCAI 2026, and all submissions should only be made as PDF documents. Ensure to remove any identifying meta-information (such as author names etc) from the uploaded PDF documents.
Parallel Submission: Double / parallel submission to the general/main track IJCAI track, to other special tracks, or to other conferences or journals is strictly forbidden at any stage during the entire review process. Papers not meeting this requirement will be immediately excluded from further consideration.
Registered Email ID: Each author must have a valid, registered email ID within the conference management. The track chairs reserve the right to disqualify papers where authors do not have a registered email ID, or if contributing authors use different emails for their diverse roles in IJCAI 2026. Contributing authors who are also involved in the review process at IJCAI 20206, and more broadly all individuals involved in IJCAI 2026, are required to also adhere to the IJCAI conflict of interest policy. Details can be found at: https://www.ijcai.org/IJCAI_Conflict_of_Interest_Policy.pdf
Supplementary Material: As applicable, supplementary material of potentially two types may be submitted: (1) Open-Science related supplementary material exclusively including source-code, data, readme, documentation, demo video; and (2) Resubmission information for papers that have been previously rejected and are being re-submitted with or without revisions (refer details below on “Resubmission Information”). All supplementary material is to be exclusively submitted via the IJCAI 2026 CMT system. Deadline extensions for submission of such material are not possible, and reviewers will be advised to not utilise external links etc to access such material (i.e., please do not link any material from the PDF). Please be judicious in your submission of the supplementary material: the supplementary is not a place to write an extended paper / additional results, or to provide a technical elaboration of some aspects of your main paper. Videos should only serve the purpose of a demo.
Resubmission Information: Previously rejected paper resubmissions are welcome, but authors are required to provide detailed resubmission information. Failure to declare a resubmission, or to submit relevant information will lead to automatic disqualification. Authors must declare whether their paper has been previously rejected from another peer-reviewed conference in the past (e.g., mere changes of title and minor content editing or re-working in relation to a previously rejected paper would not qualify as a new paper). Authors are requested to upload the latest rejected version together with the original reviewer’s comments; a cover letter responding to the reviews is encouraged. To avoid bias, the resubmission information will only be made available to reviewers of the special track after they submit their reviews. The program committee reserves the right to reject papers that fail to report resubmission information. Please note that reviewers will be encouraged to check whether the resubmission addresses the key issues pointed out in the reviews of the previous version (e.g., incorrect attribution of results, etc.) and to reject submissions that fail to do so. IJCAI chairs reserve the right to consult previously involved program chairs of the conference where the paper was previously rejected.
Anonymity and Author Information: The PDF of the paper and other supporting documents (meant for peer review) must be anonymous, and papers and authors are expected to satisfy the highest scientific standards as per the general rules of submission, conflict of interest, and overall ethical conduct applicable to IJCAI 2026. Review is double blind, but all authors must provide author information as part of the submission system (see the point above about Valid Email ID).
Participation in the conference: At least one author of each accepted paper must participate in the conference at Bremen and present the work. We are looking forward to the community meeting in person. Papers not presented in person will be excluded from the proceedings unless one of the authors provides notification of exceptional circumstances to IJCAI via pcchair@2026.ijcai.org. Any such exceptional circumstances must receive prior approval from IJCAI.
Ethics policy and ethics statement: IJCAI is committed to the highest standards of research integrity. Submissions must adhere to fundamental ethical principles, including the responsible use of datasets (respecting privacy, copyright, and informed consent) and mitigating potential societal harms (such as risks to safety, and issues related to discrimination and bias).
Consistent with the previous editions of the conference, IJCAI-ECAI 2026 will implement a streamlined ethics review policy. Reviewers will be asked to flag glaring violations of ethical principles. Such flagged submissions will be reviewed by the Ethics Chair. In rare situations, the Program Chair, advised by the Ethics Chair, reserves the right to reject a submission on ethical grounds. However, we anticipate that the primary approach to addressing ethical concerns will require authors to revise their submissions to include a discussion that identifies these concerns and proposes strategies for their mitigation.
Authors can include in the main body of their paper, or on the reference pages, an ethics statement that addresses both ethical issues regarding the research being reported and the broader ethical impact of the work. Note that such an ethics statement is not required, but we recommend that papers working with sensitive data or on sensitive tasks include such discussion. The IJCAI review form will include a section asking reviewers and ACs to flag any serious ethical concerns.
Conflict of interest policy: All individuals involved in the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 review process must adhere to the IJCAI conflict of interest policy. Details can be found at https://www.ijcai.org/IJCAI_Conflict_of_Interest_Policy.pdf. All authors of papers submitted to IJCAI-ECAI 2026 agree to be bound by the conditions outlined in this call for papers (w.r.t. multiple submissions, authorship, resubmission policy, submission limit, etc.). Authors and reviewers acknowledge that IJCAI may take action against individuals in breach of the conflict of interest and call for papers policies, including – but not limited to – rejecting their submissions without further review and banning individuals from submitting their work to a limited number of IJCAI conferences in the future.
Confidentiality policy: All submissions will be handled with strict confidentiality until their publication date.
Submission Process
Formatting guidelines: The updated LaTeX styles and Word template are available at https://www.ijcai.org/authors_kit.
Author Information: Full papers must be submitted through the same site by the paper submission deadline. The list of author names provided at the Author Information Deadline is final. Authors may not be added to or removed from papers following submission. (The author’s ordering may still be changed during the camera-ready period.) Providing accurate author details is essential for managing the paper workflow process. Therefore, all authors must register and fill out the author information form on the submission site by the Author Information deadline. Please note that ORCID is now compulsory! Submissions may be rejected without review if any co-author fails to register and submit the necessary information.
Submission limit: IJCAI-ECAI 2026 will enforce a strict submission limit. Each author is limited to no more than 8 submissions to IJCAI-ECAI 2026.
Keywords: When submitting abstracts, authors must choose up to three content area keywords. General categories should be used only if specific categories do not apply or do not accurately reflect the main contributions. The full list of keywords will be available on the submission site.
Copyright: IJCAI-ECAI 2026 will be conducted in accordance with IJCAI guidelines. All accepted papers will be published exclusively by IJCAI (open access), with IJCAI retaining the copyright.
Submission Requirements
Paper format: Papers submitted to IJCAI-ECAI 2026 must be formatted according to the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 guidelines (link above). Submissions must be self-contained. Authors are required to submit their electronic papers in PDF format. Submissions that violate the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 style (e.g., by decreasing margins or font sizes) will be rejected without review.
Preprints: The existence of non-anonymous preprints (on arXiv, social media, websites, etc.) and prior publication in non-archival venues will not result in rejection. Note that the submission to IJCAI-ECAI 2026 must always be anonymized regardless of whether a preprint has been released. Reviewers will be instructed not to look for such preprints actively, but encountering them will not constitute a conflict of interest.
Reproducibility: Authors must follow the reproducibility guidelines(available here) and checklist at the time of paper submission.
Dual submissions: IJCAI-ECAI 2026 will not accept any paper that, at the time of full paper submission, is under review for, has already been published in or has already been accepted for publication in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. Authors of IJCAI-ECAI 2026 submissions are also not permitted to submit their paper to a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings during the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 review period. (As a guideline, authors should regard publications with a DOI, ISBN, or ISSN as formal publications.
Track Chairs
Prof. Carlo Combi (University of Verona, Italy) carlo.combi@univr.it
Prof. Luca Romeo (University of Macerata, Italy) luca.romeo@unimc.it
Enquiries: ai-and-health@2026.ijcai.org
(Please direct all special track related queries to the special track email ai-and-health@2026.ijcai.org)