JMIR Formative Research

Digital health tools, including patient portals, telemedicine, and mobile health apps, are increasingly a core part of health care. Digital readiness, encompassing both digital access and literacy, is crucial for enabling patients to effectively engage with the increasing number of digital health tools. Despite growing recognition of digital readiness as a health-related social need, little is known about digital readiness screening practices.

Rare genetic diseases pose significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges, often leading to delayed diagnoses, misinformation, and patient isolation. Social media platforms have emerged as prominent spaces for health information dissemination and community building among patients with rare diseases.

Digitalization has profoundly transformed health care delivery, including the increasing use of telemedical applications in pediatric care. While the economic benefits and improved access associated with telemedicine in rural regions are well documented, data on caregiver acceptance and demand in metropolitan areas remain limited.

In 2017, the US Department of Health and Human Services declared a national opioid crisis. In 2022, an estimated 81,806 overdose deaths involved an opioid. Emergency departments are critical in the pathway of care for providing resources and linkages to services. Studies investigating emergency medicine (EM) physicians’ perspectives on the opioid crisis have largely focused on prescribing.

The sociopolitical crisis in Haiti affects health care center attendance, creating significant challenges in ensuring patient compliance with medical appointments.

Vitiligo is a chronic skin disease with a global prevalence of approximately 1% to 2%, characterized by depigmented macules. Little is known about the public interest and medical needs of patients with vitiligo in Germany. However, understanding this is critical for a patient-centered holistic therapeutic management of the disease.

Mental health disorders are a growing public health concern among university students globally and in India, exacerbated by stigma and limited access to care. Mobile health (mHealth) apps offer a potential solution, but user engagement and cultural relevance remain key challenges. This pilot study evaluated Here for You, a mental health screening app co-designed with Indian university students to provide accessible, nonstigmatizing support.

Anemia is a widespread global health issue. Hemoglobin (Hb) concentration measurement remains the most common method for anemia screening and diagnosis. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the development of noninvasive point-of-care technologies that eliminate the need for blood sampling.

Individuals with tic disorders (TDs) have access to a small but growing number of digital tools (such as apps and websites) for tic management and support. While prior work has shown promise for these tools, they have traditionally been designed by researchers first and evaluated by members of the TD community after tool development is complete. A human-centered design process targeting this domain has the potential to reveal new insights relevant to the development of future tools. We seek to establish a preliminary understanding of how the TD community uses and perceives current resources for tic management and support as well as their overall concerns and needs in this area.

Autonomous motivation, grounded in self-determination theory, is important for sustaining diabetes self-care behaviors. Although mobile health interventions, gamification, and peer support are increasingly used to enhance motivation in diabetes care, evidence on how motivation evolves over time remains limited. Specifically, it is unclear whether motivational change follows a linear pattern or a nonlinear trajectory, such as an initial increase followed by a subsequent decline. Clarifying these temporal patterns is critical for informing the design of adaptive diabetes self-care interventions.

Investigation of community awareness of HIV functional cure has often been restricted to people living with HIV. An understanding of the attitudes of men who have sex with men (MSM) without HIV is important, as it contributes to the supportiveness of curative treatment in the community.

Diabetes is a chronic disease with a high global prevalence, increasing from 200 million people in 1990 to 830 million in 2022, with a higher burden in low- and middle-income regions and high mortality in Mexico and Veracruz. These inequalities limit access to treatment and nutritional education, requiring technological solutions such as interactive kiosks based on artificial intelligence (AI) that contribute to the nutritional management of people with diabetes in marginalized communities.