JMIR Formative Research

Latina pregnant women and mothers of infants in the United States experience elevated risk for perinatal anxiety, stress, and depression alongside persistent barriers to culturally and linguistically responsive care. AI-powered digital health tools offer a potentially scalable approach to address these gaps, yet evidence on their acceptability and effectiveness for this population remains limited.

Only approximately half of adults with hypertension, a leading cardiovascular risk factor, achieve blood pressure (BP) control, with persistent disparities among low-income and minority populations. Wireless home BP monitoring (HBPM) with remote patient monitoring can improve BP control, but evidence is limited in medically underserved, predominantly Hispanic populations served by federally qualified health centers (FQHCs).

Despite strong evidence supporting the benefits of regular physical activity (PA) for managing coronary heart disease (CHD), PA advice remains infrequent in general practice. Barriers include the limited familiarity of general practitioners (GPs) with current PA guidelines and their application to CHD patients, their insufficient skills for delivering very brief advice, and time constraints. To our knowledge, no structured, theory-informed training has been reported in Germany to support GPs in delivering very brief PA advice in routine CHD care.

Among 80 wearable members stratified into quartiles of attainment of combined physical-activity and sleep recommendations, higher attainment showed age-adjusted associations with lower resting heart rate and BMI and higher heart rate variability. The lowest-attainment quartile incurred approximately 12-fold higher annual per-member health care spending than the other quartiles.

The growing interest in promoting child health requires minimally invasive biospecimen collection. Particularly during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increased interest in microsampling technology to democratize participation in research involving biospecimens, particularly for children. These advances mitigate barriers, such as scheduling, transportation, and psychosocial challenges. Tasso is a microsampling biomedical device that has gained popularity in research. It uses a vacuum-assisted capillary system that attaches to the upper arm and is considered minimally invasive, as it requires no venipuncture or phlebotomist. Yet, important gaps remain in understanding Tasso performance, particularly among pediatric populations where its administration is limited.

Veterans experiencing moral injury (ie, having witnessed or done something during military service that conflicts with one’s value system) may encounter challenges that affect engagement and learning in online contexts.

Depression prevalence is rising in adolescents and young adults (ages 10-24 years). Traditional screening methods for depression, such as the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), are particularly challenging for adolescents. AI has potential to help with this, but the scarcity of annotated datasets highlights the need for off-the-shelf approaches. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of using state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) to detect depressive symptoms in adolescent settings (ages 15-17 years).

Delirium is a complex neuropsychiatric syndrome whose severe and lasting consequences in hospitalized patients are largely considered preventable. Prevention primarily relies on the early identification of high-risk patients prior to syndrome onset. However, this remains challenging in clinical practice due to the absence of a diagnostic gold standard and the considerable administrative burden associated with established screening tools such as the 4AT score.

The prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) among women giving birth in US hospitals continues to rise. Increasing fatalities due to perinatal drug overdose have in part been attributed to decreased access to social support and treatment services. In recent years, mobile health (mHealth) technologies have been used to provide care to patients outside of traditional clinical settings. Given that perinatal OUD treatment works best when there is frequent contact between patient and clinician, harnessing mHealth could be valuable for improving patient engagement in perinatal OUD care.

AI is increasingly integrated into health care systems worldwide, with growing implications for pharmacy practice. Although studies have reported general perceptions of AI, gaps between awareness and practical implementation remain evident, particularly in middle-income settings.

Clinical trial data pipelines must follow Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) standards, including the study data tabulation model (SDTM) and analysis data model (ADaM). General-purpose large language models (LLMs) can produce plausible artifacts that omit required variables, misuse terminology, or invent derivation logic. Curated context may reduce these errors, but the value of organizing that context by workflow topology has not been separated from corpus access alone.

In the United Kingdom, first contact practitioners (FCPs) provide direct access to musculoskeletal (MSK) assessment and management in primary care. This means FCPs have to assess patients with no prior medical screening, which assumes reliance on developed skills and experience. The pool of appropriately experienced physiotherapists is limited, and less experienced clinicians have been recruited. A 2026 national evaluation found substantial variation in FCP service delivery, with data collection and governance among its structural causes. The Primary Care Individual Social Norms MSK Data Dashboard (PRISM) dashboard gives FCPs feedback on their clinical activity relative to their peers to support reflection toward improving MSK care.