Recent Articles
Health care leaders face a strategic dilemma: traditional expert-led content development ensures safety but is too slow for digital innovation, whereas artificial intelligence (AI) automation offers speed but introduces risks from hallucinations. Resolving this tension requires governance frameworks that balance operational efficiency with rigorous accountability for patient safety.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is arriving in high-stakes assessment; however, governance, validity evidence, and faculty readiness remain uneven. From a Taiwan-Japan perspective, we outline a pragmatic, transferable approach to integrating AI into nursing objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) using a 5-AI-role model—learning assistant, AI‑augmented standardized patient, assessment assistant, case generator, and learning analyst—mapped across pre-OSCE, peri-OSCE, and post-OSCE workflows with human-in-the-loop final judgment. Taiwan contributes agile interdisciplinary development, staged pilots (practice, mock OSCE, and limited high-stakes stations), A/B comparisons, and explainability-by-design logging that links scores to time-stamped evidence. Japan contributes robust policy scaffolding (national AI use guidance in K-12, a revised nursing model core curriculum with outcomes and assessment blueprints, and institutional research cultures that support auditability and quality assurance). We distill 4 cross-cutting governance pillars—human oversight, learning process transparency, ethics and safety, and traceability—into implementable techniques (machine-readable rubrics, standardized patient persona cards, bias monitoring, and targeted faculty development). Aligning with international principles (International Advisory Committee for AI; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; World Health Organization; European Commission’s High Level Expert Group; and National Institute of Standards and Technology), we propose a joint road map and shared registry to benchmark reliability, validity, equity, and workload impact. This viewpoint targets OSCE directors, nursing educators, and institutional leaders and provides a phase-gated governance blueprint rather than reporting original trial outcomes. Taiwan-led agility, complemented by Japan’s standards-driven assurance, can form an Asia-Pacific reference model for trustworthy AI‑augmented OSCE in nursing education.
Visual patient avatars are an innovative patient monitoring technology that can be used to translate numerical and waveform data into intuitive, avatar-based representations of patient conditions. Previous research indicates that this technology improves health care providers’ situational awareness compared to conventional monitoring methods. As patient-worn continuous vital sign monitoring continues to evolve, we introduce the Visual Patient Wearable device to provide avatar-based visualization tailored to this application.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years. Pediatric suicidality is underreported, which poses significant challenges for effective intervention and prevention strategies. Identifying populations at risk of suicidality can provide critical benefits in terms of study cohort selection, prevalence estimation, and clinical resource allocation.
Depression during the perinatal period poses significant risks to both maternal and infant health. Although transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has shown promise as a safe and well-tolerated intervention for perinatal depression, empirical evidence remains limited, and no prior study has integrated clinical outcomes with continuous objective behavioral monitoring.
Health care has seen several new disruptive technologies. One such innovation is the introduction of blockchain smart contracts. These smart contracts are activated automatically once preprogrammed conditions are met. Smart contracts have improved patient outcomes, the efficiency of care delivery, and reduced costs. Despite their benefits, patients have had limited interactions with smart contracts in primary care; therefore, they may not trust blockchain-based smart contracts and may perceive them as risky or have concerns about their security.
Mental health providers (MHPs) face a significant administrative burden from documentation, which can contribute to burnout and reduce time available for direct patient care. Although artificial intelligence (AI)–powered scribes have shown promise in general medical settings, their utility has not been well explored in the specific context of mental health care. This study describes the development and preliminary observational evaluation of Smart Notes, a generative AI tool designed to assist MHPs with documentation on a commercial virtual mental health platform.
Approximately 45% of individuals taking methadone or buprenorphine have chronic pain. These medications are commonly prescribed for chronic pain or opioid use disorder (OUD). To optimize pain management as well as reduce opioid-related symptoms (eg, craving) and risks (misuse and overdose), there is a critical need for a brief, effective, and accessible pain skills intervention for this population.
Stress is a key determinant of health outcomes and may influence work performance. Questionnaire-based assessments of stress are typically broad and retrospective. Daily stress measurements via smartphones offer more granular, real-time data but have adherence issues. Using an already established communication medium (WhatsApp) and a more conversational style assessment might improve adherence and help collect more detailed insights into (work) stress, underlying stressors, and countering energy sources.
Coupled with an aging population and lower fertility rates, there is a growing number of carer-employees (CEs), those balancing unpaid care with paid employment. Over 5.2 million Canadians are CEs juggling this dual role, often incurring negative impacts to their mental and physical health as a result. Given that unpaid care makes up 75% of care provided in Canada, the economic importance of supporting CEs extends to sustaining health care systems. Supporting and accommodating CEs in the workplace has not only been proved to be beneficial to the well-being of CEs but also to the organization through increased productivity and lower turnover rates. Despite the clear advantages of implementing carer-inclusive workplace practices (CIWPs) in the workplace, many organizations across Canada remain largely unsupportive of CE accommodations. The present study evaluated the impact of a knowledge mobilization (KMb) campaign.
Health information systems (HISs) are essential for strengthening health systems in underserved areas. However, many HISs in Africa are still in the early stages of implementation, and existing systems often suffer from imbalances in data availability. Their optimization is faced with various challenges, including limited resources, which restricts their scalability.
Parents of autistic children frequently experience elevated stress levels, depressive symptoms, and reduced well-being. Positive psychology interventions (PPIs) can strengthen resilience, and chatbots offer a scalable channel through which such skills can be delivered. However, evidence on the evaluation of large language model–guided PPI-based chatbots for this population is limited.
