JMIR Formative Research

Heart failure (HF) is the primary cause of hospitalization among Canadian patients aged ≥65 years. Care for HF requires regular clinical follow-ups to prevent readmissions and facilitate medical therapy optimization. Multiple barriers lead to therapeutic medical inertia including limited human resources and regional inequities. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) and digital therapeutics (DTx) solutions have been developed to improve HF management, but their adoption remains limited and underexplored. The Continuum project emerged as a collaborative initiative involving a health care center, a software start-up, and an industrial partner.

Dynamic consent has the potential to address many of the issues facing traditional paper-based or electronic consent, including enrolling informed and engaged participants in the decision-making process. The Australians Together Health Initiative (ATHENA) program aims to connect participants across Queensland, Australia, with new research opportunities. At its core is dynamic consent, an interactive and participant-centric digital platform that enables users to view ongoing research activities, update consent preferences, and have ongoing engagement with researchers.

Medical staff often conduct assessments, such as food intake and nutrient sufficiency ratios, to accurately evaluate patients’ food consumption. However, visual estimations to measure food intake are difficult to perform with numerous patients. Hence, the clinical environment requires a simple and accurate method to measure dietary intake.

Diabetes is a serious public health concern worldwide. Despite public health efforts encouraging early screening and improving knowledge of effective interventions for those at increased risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D), the incorporation of preventative behaviors into an individual’s daily life remains suboptimal. Successfully and accurately increasing risk perception has been demonstrated to increase behavioral intention.

Breast implants, including textured variants, have been widely used in aesthetic and reconstructive mammoplasty. However, the textured type, which is one of the shell texture types of breast implants, has been identified as a possible etiologic factor for lymphoma, specifically breast implant–associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL). Identifying the shell texture type of the implant is critical to diagnosing BIA-ALCL. However, distinguishing the shell texture type can be difficult due to the loss of human memory and medical history. An alternative approach is to use ultrasonography, but this method also has limitations in quantitative assessment.

Group therapy is a scalable and effective treatment for anxiety disorders. However, when performed online, the reduced ability to identify with group members and the reduced interactivity can limit its appeal and effectiveness. Extended reality (XR) technology, including virtual reality and augmented reality, may help address these limitations, thereby enhancing the reach of online group therapy and the benefits that can be drawn from it. To understand how the incorporation of XR technology may improve online group therapy for anxiety disorders, this viewpoint paper examines evidence related to the treatment of anxiety disorders using offline group therapy, online group therapy, and virtual reality, as well as ways to increase social identification and interactivity with the platform, the therapist, and other users. This viewpoint paper suggests ways to integrate these research streams to leverage the strengths of XR platforms and improve group therapeutic offerings.

Weight stigma is a fundamental cause of health inequality. Body positivity may be a counterbalance to weight stigma. Social media is replete with weight-stigmatizing content and is a driver of poor mental health outcomes; however, there remains a gap in understanding its potential to mitigate the prevalence and impact of harmful messaging and to promote positive effects on a large scale.

Delayed diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) contributes to poorer health outcomes and onward transmission to sexual partners. Access to best-practice sexual health care may be limited by barriers such as cost, distance to care providers, sexual stigma, and trust in health care providers. Online assessments of risk offer a novel means of supporting access to evidence-based sexual health information, testing, and treatment by providing more individualized sexual health information based on user inputs.

To monitor the use of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate and emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) and related medicines for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as HIV prevention using commercial pharmacy data, it is necessary to determine whether TDF/FTC prescriptions are used for PrEP or for some other clinical indication.

Alcohol use disorder is among the most pervasive substance use disorders in the United States, with a lifetime prevalence of 30%. Recommended treatment options include evidence-based behavioral interventions; smartphone-based interventions confer a number of benefits such as portability, continuous access, and stigma avoidance; and research suggests that interventions involving couples may outperform those for patients only. In this context, a behavioral intervention delivered to couples through smartphones may serve as an effective adjunct to alcohol use disorder treatment.

The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set ambitious hepatitis C virus (HCV) elimination targets for 2030. Current estimates show that the United States is not on pace to meet elimination targets due to multiple patient, clinic, institutional, and societal level barriers that contribute to HCV testing and treatment gaps. Among these barriers are unawareness of testing and treatment needs, misinformation concerning adverse treatment reactions, need for substance use sobriety, and treatment efficacy. Strategies to improve viral hepatitis education are needed.

Approximately 4% to 8% of pregnant individuals meet the criteria for current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a known risk factor for a multitude of adverse maternal and child health outcomes. However, PTSD is rarely detected or treated in obstetric settings. Moreover, available prenatal PTSD treatments require in-person services that are often inaccessible due to barriers to care. Thus, web-based interventions offer great potential in extending PTSD treatment to high-risk pregnant individuals by providing affordable, accessible care. However, there are currently no web-based interventions designed specifically for the treatment of PTSD symptoms during pregnancy.