JMIR Formative Research

This formative research explored health science researchers’ perspectives on the development of an artificial intelligence–based virtual study assistant and identified 8 potential features and their priorities.

This study uses the 2011-2017 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data to demonstrate that sociodemographic factors are associated with transportation delays among individuals with knee osteoarthritis.

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare recently updated the national guidelines for at-risk consumption of alcohol. Nearly 30% of the Swedish population now falls under the at-risk category and should be provided with support.

In contrast to all previous generations, life today is lived both in-person and online. This creates both opportunities and risks to mental health and well-being. Social interaction is no longer geographically constrained, yet the anonymity and impersonality of social media create new problems. To quote Mike Tyson (July 2020), “Social media have made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

The COVID-19 vaccine was introduced as a crucial tool to combat the pandemic. However, concerns about its effectiveness, side effects, and misinformation spread remain. Prior research largely relied on survey-based approaches with limited populations. To address these limitations, social media offers a broader, more naturalistic lens into public discourse on COVID-19 vaccination. Accordingly, our study leverages social media data to identify factors shaping vaccine-related information needs, perceptions, and communication dynamics.

Alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) is a global health concern, and harmful alcohol use negatively affects clinical outcomes and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Previous studies have demonstrated impaired HRQOL in chronic liver disease, including ALD; however, evidence remains limited regarding whether hepatologist-delivered abstinence support in outpatient practice can improve HRQOL. Digital interventions such as smartphone journaling apps may support behavior change, but their effectiveness in hepatology-led care settings has not been well established.

Acquiring relevant knowledge and support is essential for informal caregivers of persons with early-stage dementia, including awareness, access, and use of comprehensive resources for both persons with dementia and caregiver support. With appropriate strategies and early-stage support, informal caregivers can play a vital role in enhancing the well-being of persons with dementia and potentially slowing their progression. While large language models (LLMs) can provide easy access to caregiving knowledge, the risks, perceived challenges, and ways to improve LLM-generated responses in practice remain underexplored.

Chronic back pain is a severe health condition with underlying biopsychosocial factors that make diagnosis difficult, and pain chronicity has been shown to be an important variable for studying patient outcomes. Due to the absence of standardized criteria, pain chronicity needs to be manually annotated by clinicians in electronic health records (EHRs), which is not only time consuming but also has the potential to introduce variability in analysis and interpretation among practitioners.

It is considered advantageous to adopt an interdisciplinary approach when creating serious games in the sphere of health practice. However, different fields have reported that interdisciplinary work is challenging. Yet, the literature is scarce regarding how participants within health research have experienced collaborative research. In 2019 and 2020, total 3 teams collaborated to produce a serious game for children undergoing radiotherapy.

Modern workplaces create increasing demands on employees, often leading to stress, burnout, and reduced functional capacity. These challenges contribute to significant functionality losses, with absenteeism and presenteeism posing economic burdens. Mindfulness-based workplace interventions have been shown to improve mental health, yet their effects on specific work-related performance outcomes such as concentration difficulties, mistakes, and procrastination over time are less explored.

Aspiration causes or aggravates a variety of respiratory diseases. Subjective bedside evaluations of aspiration are limited by poor interrater and intrarater reliability, while gold standard diagnostic tests for aspiration, such as video fluoroscopic swallow study and fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing, are cumbersome or invasive and health care resource-intensive.

Mental health disorders are common among adolescents worldwide; yet, access to preventive and early intervention services remains limited. Digital mental health platforms may help bridge this gap, but little is known about how these platforms are perceived, implemented, and adopted by school and community stakeholders during early stages of rollout in real-world youth-serving settings.