Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference On Smart Homes and and Health Telematics, ICOST 2008, held in Ames, IA, USA, in June/July 2008. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on assistive technology to improve quality of life for older adults and their caregivers; context awareness/autonomous computing; devices, systems and algorithms for vision/hearing/cognitive/communication impairments; home health monitoring and intervention; human-machine interface and ambient intelligence; modeling of physical and conceptual information in intelligent environments; real world deployments and experiences in smart homes, hospitals, and living communities; and social/privacy/security issues.