JMIR Formative Research

Language barriers in health care can lead to misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, and increased medical errors. Efforts to mitigate these include using interpreters and translation tools, but these measures often fall short, particularly when cultural nuances are overlooked. Consequently, medical professionals may have to rely on their staff or patients’ relatives for interpretation, compromising the quality of care.

Supplementing outpatient medical care with the use of video consultations could, among other benefits, improve access, especially in structurally disadvantaged areas.

Rising rates of anxiety among teens necessitate innovative approaches for implementing evidence-based mental health support. Public libraries, seen as safe spaces for patrons with marginalized identities, offer free public services such as broadband internet access. Many teens spend significant amounts of time in their local libraries due to the safety of this space as well as the trusted adults working there. The American Library Association has shifted its priorities to focus more on mental health through employing social workers and providing mental health programs. As such, public libraries may be promising sites for the implementation of digital mental health (DMH) programs for teens.

Effectively managing epilepsy in children necessitates the active engagement of parents, a factor that is reliant on their understanding of this neurological disorder. Widely available, high-quality, patient-focused, bilingual, video content describing topics important for the management of epilepsy is limited. YouTube analytics is a helpful resource for gaining insights into how video content is consumed by users of differing backgrounds.

Pneumoconiosis prevalence is increasing in rural US, especially among coal miners. Contemporaneously with an increased need for miners for specialized multidisciplinary care, there is a shortage of experts to fulfill this need. Miners' Wellness ECHO is a digital community of practice based on interprofessional discussion for knowledge transfer. The program has been demonstrated to increase participants' self-efficacy for clinical, medicolegal, and "soft" skills related to miners' health.

Screening for cognitive impairment in primary care is important, yet primary care physicians (PCPs) report conducting routine cognitive assessments for less than half of patients older than 60 years of age. Linus Health’s Core Cognitive Evaluation (CCE), a tablet-based digital cognitive assessment, has been used for the detection of cognitive impairment, but its application in primary care is not yet studied.

Online research studies enable engagement with more Black cisgender women in health-related research. However, fraudulent data collection responses in online studies raise important concerns about data integrity, particularly when incentives are involved.

Although electronic health record nursing summaries aim to provide a concise overview of patient data, they often fall short of meeting nurses’ information needs, leading to underutilization. This gap arises from a lack of involvement of nurses in the design of health information technologies.

In the post-pandemic era, telemedicine continues to enable mental health care access for many people, especially persons living in areas with mental health care provider shortages. However, as lawmakers consider long-term telemedicine policy decisions, some question the safety and appropriateness of prescribing via telemedicine, and whether there should be requirements for in-person evaluation, especially for controlled substances.

Patients with chronic pain on long-term opioid therapy often face barriers to accessing effective nonpharmacological treatments, including the burden of multiple sessions, lack of trained clinicians, and travel time. Empowered Relief (ER), a 2-hour, single-session pain relief skills class, can improve pain and quality of life among patients with chronic pain when delivered in person or virtually.

Up to 75% of young adult cancer survivors (YACS) experience chronic insomnia, negatively affecting physical and emotional health and overall quality of life. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is a gold-standard intervention to address insomnia. To improve CBT-I access and treatment adherence, screen-based digital CBT-I platforms have been developed. However, even with these digital products, widespread uptake of CBT-I remains limited, and new strategies for CBT-I delivery are warranted.

Rapid integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) in healthcare is sparking global discussion about their potential to revolutionize healthcare quality and accessibility. At a time when improving healthcare quality and access remains a critical concern for countries worldwide, the ability of these models to pass medical exams is often cited as a reason to use them for medical training and diagnosis. However, the impact of their inevitable use as a self-diagnostic tool and their role in spreading healthcare misinformation has not been evaluated.