HHAI2026, Call for Papers (closed):
Workshop on Health, Wellbeing and Human-AI Interaction

We invite paper contributions to an in-person workshop on Health, Wellbeing and Human-AI Interaction (HAII). The workshop will take place on the afternoon of Monday 6 July as part of the Hybrid-Human AI (HHAI2026) Conference 6-10 July 2026 in Brussels.

Link to original Call for Papers

Context

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly translating into health and care and has increasing relevance to individual wellbeing. It brings potentially transformative benefits together with new challenges. Example applications range from AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment support to wellness chatbots and fitness coaches, offering personalized care, continuous monitoring, and proactive individual wellbeing interventions. AI-driven self-help tools can also act as empathetic companions, offering tailored emotional support and nudges to encourage long-term behaviour change. At the same time, issues relating to trust (both over- and under-trust), transparency and bias persist. Additionally, there are concerns that poorly designed and implemented AI solutions could lead to unintended consequences such as eroding skill acquisition, lessening human participation, reducing human agency, and even evoking guilt in professional, educational, and everyday settings.

About the Workshop

The in-person workshop will gather individuals with expertise and interest in challenges and opportunities relating to health, wellbeing and HAII. The schedule will include an expert keynote, plenary talks from authors of accepted papers, opportunities for Q&A and a facilitated discussion of key topics. The workshop will close with a discussion of future research directions, opportunities for maintaining a community interest in the theme and the possibilities for future research workshops and events on the theme.

Please note that at least one author must attend the workshop in person.

Papers compatible with HHAI2026 conference paper types and template are invited on topics including (but not limited to):

• Explainability and transparency in AI-driven health tools

• Emotional and psychological impacts of interacting with AI including positive effects (such as reduced stigma or increased comfort with virtual support) and negative reactions (anxiety, confusion, or over-reliance on non-human advice)

• Human-AI collaboration in clinical decision-making and caring relationships

• Humanity-centred AI and algorithmic aversion in health and wellbeing

• AI-driven behaviour-change and habit formation, e.g., the design of health coaches, reminder systems, and personalized nudging technologies

• Participatory and inclusive design approaches for health and wellbeing in HAII systems

• Unintended consequences and long-term implications relating to HAII e.g., including downstream effects of dehumanized algorithmic care, privacy and surveillance concerns in wellness tracking or shifts in trust dynamics

• Approaches to trust and user empowerment, including user education, managing AI and HAII expectations

• Exploring the potential of AI-supported healthcare systems to strengthen societal resilience, e.g., building capacity to anticipate, adapt to, and recover from public health crises

• Personalization in HAII systems: Exploring design strategies that go beyond demographic targeting to include psychological, behavioural, and contextual profiling

• Approaches to mitigate (implicit or explicit) misuse of interactive AI-systems.

• The future of health and wellbeing HAII: What is next in how we interact with intelligent agents – at home, work, and in society?

• Inclusive AI for health and wellbeing for everyone: Designing AI agents that work well for all users – including people with disabilities, different languages, or tech skill levels

• Ethics and agency in health and wellbeing: Who is in control? Discussing fairness, responsibility, and human oversight in AI-agent decision-making.

• Learning from Users: How AI can improve over time; Exploring ways AI agents can learn by watching and listening to users

• Multi-modal AI for health and wellbeing: Talking, seeing, and understanding together (AI agents that can use speech, vision, and gestures to better interact with humans)

• Agentic AI and GenAI healthcare applications, guardrails, hallucination and bias mitigation, etc.

Key Dates

• Participant submissions due: May 1st, 2026, May 11th, 2026 (Anytime on Earth)

• Participants notified of acceptance: May 29th, 2026

Submission

• Paper submissions will be via the HHAI2026 EasyChair Portal

Paper Types

Authors may select from the HHAI2026 paper types which include those below. All submissions should adhere to IOS formatting guidelines. 

• Full papers present original, impactful work (12 pages excluding references)

• Blue sky papers present visionary ideas to stimulate the research community (8 pages excluding references)

• Working papers present work in progress (8 pages excluding references)

• Extended abstracts present published journal articles from January 2025 onwards (3 pages excluding references)

Organisers and Programme Committee

Sandra I. Woolley a, Baidaa Al‑Bander a, Ed de Quincey a, Marco Ortolani a, Tim Collins b, Charlotte Blease c, Luciana D’Adderio d, Clare Rainey e, Michael McTear f and Raymond Bond f

a Keele University, b Manchester Metropolitan University, c Uppsala University, d The University of Edinburgh, e University College Cork and f Ulster University

Enquiries: Enquiries can be made to workshop lead: Baidaa Al-Bander b.al-bander@keele.ac.uk cc’ing Sandra Woolley s.i.woolley@keele.ac.uk