JMIR Formative Research

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective approach for supporting health behaviorchange, but face-to-face delivery is resource-intensive and difficult to scale. Rule-based conversational agents (CAs) can improve access; however, their scripted interactions and limited language flexibility constrain MI delivery. While large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used for MI coaching, their conversational fidelity and quality compared with human coaches and rule-based CAs remain understudied.

The demand for sleep interventions is high and steadily growing. Digital therapeutics (DTx) can help individuals improve their sleep remotely, over an extended period, and with less effort from medical professionals. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), one of the most prevalent and consequential sleep disorders, can be treated with health-supporting behavior changes, such as physical exercise and weight loss, and, therefore, acts as a promising application for DTx.

Vocational aptitude and cognitive resilience predict military success, yet current assessments rely on resource-intensive, in-person testing that limits scalability. A brief, self-administered, remotely deployable computerized battery offers a practical solution for large-scale screening and monitoring.

Alcohol and tobacco use frequently co-occur and contribute significantly to the global burden of disease. Despite the well-established benefits of addressing both behaviors simultaneously, health care professionals often face substantial challenges in delivering integrated interventions, including limited time, training, and resources. Digital health interventions offer a promising avenue to directly support patients in reducing alcohol and tobacco use, while bypassing some of the barriers encountered in clinical settings. However, there is a lack of consensus on the key behavior change techniques (BCTs) that must be incorporated to ensure that interventions are evidence based and contextually appropriate, making them effective.

Digital health data and infrastructure facilitate rapid analysis to provide actionable data, thereby fulfilling the principles of a learning health system. In response to a report from the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), a rapid service evaluation was carried out to identify patterns of modified-release (MR) opioid use after elective surgery.

Determining the appropriate dosage of pediatric occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology services is important when supporting families of children with disabilities. However, therapy dosage is inconsistently reported, and caregiver-delivered practice between sessions is rarely documented. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers a method to capture caregiver practice in real time and to examine factors that influence it.

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used for adjunctive relaxation training in psychiatric care. However, evidence remains limited among hospitalized patients with depressive disorders, particularly in routine inpatient settings in China, and little is known about whether improvement varies by session frequency.

Informal caregivers of people living with dementia often experience high rates of caregiver burnout while providing care. Although there are many websites and mobile apps available to help caregivers, many do not use digital tools. The Olera platform was developed to be an easily adoptable web-based support tool, connecting caregivers with long-term services and supports, financial assistance, and educational resources. The platform was developed based on the Build-Measure-Learn framework with input from caregiver needs assessments and usability studies.

Machine learning models for surgical applications require large, diverse datasets; however, data scarcity remains a critical limitation due to privacy regulations, institutional variability, and the rarity of many surgical procedures. Large language models (LLMs) offer a potential solution through synthetic data generation, but their performance and reliability in specialized surgical domains remain underexplored.

Depressive symptoms are common among older adults and can significantly impact their quality of life. However, many older adults face barriers to accessing psychological treatment. Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) is a promising alternative to face-to-face treatments, but its feasibility among older adults has been less extensively studied than in adult populations.

Dysarthria is a frequent motor speech disorder following a stroke, affecting up to 42% of survivors and resulting in reduced speech intelligibility and diminished quality of life. Clinical assessments, such as the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment, Second Edition (FDA-2), rely heavily on the subjective judgment of speech-language pathologists (SLPs), which limits comparability and scalability. Telepractice solutions have the potential to extend access to care, but validated digital tools that combine automatic analysis with clinically usable interfaces remain scarce.

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has ushered in a promising era in medicine, particularly in medical education. However, studies assessing the knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to AI among medical students in Vietnam remain limited.