The International Journal of Prognostics and Health Management (IJPHM) is the premier online open access journal related to multidisciplinary research on Prognostics, Diagnostics, and System Health Management. This special issue is focused on the development, implementation, and evolution of standards, guidelines, and best practices relevant to condition monitoring, diagnostic, and prognostic technologies across a range of operational domains.

Having its origin in aerospace, predictive health management (PHM) most recently has broken ground in the fields of wearable smart sensors, sensor-data-fusion, machine learning and data mining, prediction and diagnosis, and electronic health records and databases - all in the context of prognostics and health management for human health and performance on Earth and in Space.

PHM's current and envisioned applications are within general healthcare, sports/athletes, theatre, space, and other extreme environments along with how the needs, data stream, and supporting PHM tools, can be better designed, developed, implemented, integrated, verified, and validated to impact smart healthcare. More specifically, biofeedback-controlled devices are looming on the horizon of smart healthcare. These devices integrate wearable sensors, bi-directional data exchange, cloud-based data analysis, health and disease status modeling and prediction, and prescribed intervention/treatment onto human smart service platforms. From an end-user perspective, usability, wearability, and appearance are key design factors. From a technology point of view, high data accuracy and fidelity (i.e., medical-grade data), real-time bi-directional healthcare data streaming, real-time data analysis and understanding, and health status prediction (i.e., PHM) are critical components to create successful biofeedback-based products. Biofeedback-controlled human smart service systems have the potential to improve health and treatment outcome, with a significant savings potential in healthcare costs to patients, health insurers, and economies at large.