JMIR Formative Research

Specialized outpatient palliative care (SOPC) provides home-based care for terminally ill patients and is associated with improved quality of life and prolonged survival. Due to its decentralized structure and growing demand, SOPC is a key target for digital transformation. Telehealth, mobile health, and AI offer considerable potential benefits but also present challenges, particularly with regard to user acceptance. Although both children and adults receive SOPC under the German statutory health insurance system, services differ in terms of patient characteristics, duration of care, and geographic coverage. Moreover, there is limited knowledge regarding the extent to which digital health applications are transferable across different areas of palliative care.

One unique feature of COVID-19–associated acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is surfactant deficiency because SARS-CoV-2 specifically attacks alveolar type 2 cells.

US Navy sailors experience a range of personal and interpersonal stressors due to challenging operational tempos that can contribute to psychological distress and increased suicide risk. Digital mental fitness tools offer scalable, stigma-reducing solutions to support psychological readiness. However, many existing digital mental health interventions use top-down designs that lack input from the target population and focus on treating psychological symptoms rather than improving overall mental fitness.

Conversational agents for women’s health often fail to meet user needs, offering either clinically sterile advice or unreliable peer anecdotes. This limitation creates a tension between the need for factual safety and emotional resonance in sensitive health contexts.

Chronic opioid use, a key predictor of opioid overdose, is common among adolescents and young adults (AYA) with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), underscoring a need for tailored interventions to monitor risk for opioid-related harm. Prior research highlights the need to engage both AYA patients with IBD and IBD-focused clinicians in the development of pain management and opioid safety interventions. Human-centered design offers a promising approach to address this gap by directly engaging patients and clinicians in cocreating solutions.

Conventional mail-based follow-up for blood donors with abnormal postdonation results provides no delivery confirmation and precludes 2-way communication, creating an accountability gap in donor safety.

Peer effects influence workplace safety and productivity as employees observe and compare themselves to coworkers. However, prior simulation research has focused mainly on productivity in immersive settings, with limited attention to safety and little evidence on whether nonimmersive environments can capture peer effects across both domains. This study developed a nonimmersive virtual simulation to model peer effects on safety and productivity behavior.

Interactive dashboards have expanded public access to HIV surveillance and programmatic data, but existing tools do not synthesize implementation research evidence into formats accessible to the diverse stakeholders who could use it. Designing such tools requires deliberate alignment with users’ needs, language, and decision-making contexts.

Academic programs in health informatics have been urged to align curricula with evolving workforce needs to better prepare graduates for practice. Such alignment supports workforce readiness, addresses talent shortages, and reduces onboarding burdens for employers. Although employers increasingly seek graduates who can demonstrate applied skills and competencies beyond textbook knowledge, academic programs continue to face challenges in translating workforce demand into curricular design. This Viewpoint is directed at health informatics program faculty and administrators and presents the author’s perspective on a skills-first curriculum mapping approach aligned with current industry needs. The author argues that connecting program-level outcomes, course objectives, and learning activities to industry-recognized competencies strengthens workforce readiness while maintaining academic rigor. Drawing on the literature on competency-based education, workforce development, and health informatics training, this paper argues for intentional curriculum design that integrates transferable skills, stackable credentials, and stakeholder engagement. The key messages are as follows: (1) workforce demand should anchor curriculum design in health informatics programs, (2) curriculum mapping is a practical mechanism for operationalizing skills-first alignment, and (3) credential integration and continuous congruency evaluation support long-term program sustainability. This approach positions health informatics education to remain responsive, scalable, and aligned with the rapidly evolving professional landscape.

Sleep is essential for health, yet a large proportion of the population reports sleep complaints. The ASLEEP (Preventing and Treating Insomnia Symptoms in Mid-Life and Older Adults) intervention is conceptualized as an eCBT-I (digitally delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia) intervention aiming to prevent and treat insomnia in individuals aged 50 years and over through a novel, tiered approach. The first step, a basic course delivered via iPad through a dedicated app, includes educational videos grounded in sleep education and sleep hygiene advice, a 7-day digital sleep diary, and a postcourse digital sleep report providing personalized feedback on sleep efficiency via email.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease with an active trial landscape that relies on the sensitivity of selected clinical trial endpoints. Traditional clinical outcome assessments perform well in trials but lack strong psychometric properties and may not detect small but clinically meaningful disease progression. Digital health technologies offer a promising alternative for tracking ALS disease progression.

People with dementia and their caregivers experience significant psychological distress, which may increase their vulnerability to trauma across the dementia diagnostic and caregiving trajectory. Specialist dementia helplines offer immediate emotional support, information, and signposting; however, little empirical evidence exists about how call handlers account for potential trauma in their responses.