JMIR Formative Research

In 2020, the global prevalence of overweight and obesity was approximately 42%. One of the most common associated conditions is type 2 diabetes mellitus, which had a global prevalence of around 10.5% in 2021. Digital health applications (DiHA), which can be prescribed as certified medical devices in Germany, have been shown to effectively support disease management in patients with overweight and diabetes mellitus. However, little is known about DiHA-prescribing behavior of health care providers (HCPs) specializing in hormones and metabolism or about potential barriers to prescribing these applications.

Long COVID encompasses a range of health problems that can be highly debilitating. While some research has relied on self-reported measures of symptoms and functioning, few studies have characterized symptoms in relation to behaviors and physiology measured objectively through wearable devices.

Topical steroid withdrawal (TSW) is a controversial skin condition among healthcare providers due to lack of evidence, but it has an impactful and growing presence on social media. There are few previous reports of healthcare utilisation for symptoms attributed to TSW.

Enhancing care coordination and sharing information in cancer care improves patient experiences by promoting clarity and satisfaction.

Health care professionals must stay updated with the latest guidelines for basic life support (BLS) and advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) to effectively assist patients during cardiac emergencies. Since its launch in 2018, the Ghana Heart Initiative has significantly enhanced the skills and knowledge of health care professionals in managing cardiovascular diseases, including cardiac emergencies.

There is a gap in mental health care among Latino/x and Spanish speaking communities and the care that is available is often difficult to access, lacks cultural nuance, and results in low engagement and satisfaction.

Proactive telecare offers services designed to reduce the occurrence of emergency situations by delivering proactive outbound calls, follow-ups, and providing information and advice. By engaging regularly with users, proactive telecare may foster social connections with older adults and enable the detection of changes in needs. Telecare systems that promote active participation among older adults may also foster feelings of autonomy and self-management. However, more research in this area is needed.

HIV self-testing is an important strategy in the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative in the US. To facilitate uptake of HIV self-testing, our study team developed the mLab App, which complements existing self-test options to support the potential for higher uptake of the HIV self-test. Syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection with currently rising prevalence and overlap in risk profiles, could similarly benefit from the advantages of companion diagnostic mobile apps like mLab. Due to the success of the mLab App in promoting HIV self-testing during a randomized controlled trial and the scientific evidence of need for at-home syphilis testing, our team developed the mLab App Plus which supports both HIV and syphilis testing through an image-processing algorithm that incorporates a duplex HIV/syphilis point-of-care test.

Perinatal Substance Use Disorders (SUD) are frequently comorbid with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), contributing to adverse maternal and child outcomes. Access to integrated mental health support within existing SUD service frameworks is limited, particularly for pregnant and parenting individuals facing socioeconomic and psychosocial instability. Promoting Healthy Families (PHF) is a brief behavioral intervention designed for delivery by case managers serving high-risk perinatal populations with substance use within programs such as Parent Child Assistance Program (PCAP).

As a highly lethal circulatory failure syndrome, the pathophysiological mechanisms of shock can lead to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), which significantly increases the demand for intensive care and the length of hospitalisation.There is therefore an urgent need for the public to be informed about health-related issues. In recent years, videos have become a significant medium for health education, and this study aimed to evaluate shock-related videos on video sharing platforms.

Early detection of individuals at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis is critical for timely intervention and improving clinical outcomes. However, current UHR assessments which rely heavily on psychometric tools, often suffer from low specificity. Speech-based Machine Learning (ML) prediction models can potentially be used to improve prognostic accuracy. However, existing studies often utilised used long, open-ended speech tasks which limits scalability. The High-Risk Social Challenge (HiSoC) is a short 45-second speech task designed to measure social functioning in UHR individuals. If the HiSoC task is able to capture predictive signals, it may serve as an effective and scalable speech task for future prediction models.

A multitude of digital health tools have been developed to monitor, record, and predict health related events in healthy subjects and patients. In clinical settings although promising advances have resulted in near-term benefits, their use in longer term studies is often limited due to the level of friction and burden imposed on the subject, often requiring active engagement by the patient with digital devices and/or its interfaces. Herein we outline how Smart Ring technologies could form the anchor point for passive patient monitoring systems by offering a near-ideal compromise between device form factor and data capturing capacity. By use of wireless technologies, such devices could form integral components of a hub-and-spoke health monitoring system, feeding data to cloud based patient electronic health records, and allowing push-pull actions through bidirectional communication. Such capabilities could have immediate utility in longitudinal monitoring of patients diagnosed with slow progressing disease such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative conditions. Moreover, if integrated through provisioned federated wireless networks the technology could become components of global healthcare. To be successful, such a grand challenge would naturally require multiple technological, financial, and data privacy obstacles to be overcome. In support of this vision we outline practical considerations for development of such systems for specific applications and potential next steps for implementation.