Journal of Medical Internet Research

We read this Viewpoint with great interest, and commend the Authors for their thoughtful discussion on tribal public authority, as well as barriers and facilitators to the responsible use of data generated by or collected from members of sovereign American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Nations [1]. Key topics not covered by the Authors that warrant discussion include tribal public health workforce development, data systems infrastructure, and federal facilitation of tribal self-governance programs. These additional topics will better contextualize the ethical, legal, and social issues specific to AI/AN public health practice.

The provision of specialized, professionally coordinated, and interdisciplinary care is relevant for the care of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people diagnosed with gender incongruence/gender dysphoria. In remote areas outside the metropolitan regions, however, transgender health care structures are rarely adequate or within reach. In order to improve transgender health care for TGD people, an interdisciplinary, internet-based transgender health care program (i²TransHealth) has been developed.

Digital mental health tools promise to enhance the reach and quality of care. Current tools often recommend content to individuals, typically using generic knowledge-based systems or predictive artificial intelligence (AI). However, predictive AI is problematic for interventional recommendations as cause-effect relationships can be confounded in observed data. Therefore, causal AI are required to compare future outcomes under different interventions.

Surgical consent forms must convey critical information, yet their complex language can limit patient comprehension. Large language models (LLMs) may improve readability, but evidence of their impact on content preservation is lacking in non-English contexts.

The rising prevalence of dementia necessitates a scalable solution to cognitive screening. Paper-based cognitive screening examinations are well-validated but minimally scalable. If a digital cognitive screening examination could replicate paper-based screening, it may improve scalability while potentially maintaining performance of these well-validated paper-based tests. Here, we evaluate the Rapid Online Cognitive Assessment (RoCA), a remote and self-administered digital cognitive screening examination.

The past 25 years has seen the explosion of digital healthcare – from 1s and 0s initially serving mostly researchers to accomplish their work, to the creation of smartphones, mHealth and more recently Artificial Intelligence. The revolution for digital mental health is no longer in its infancy, as new tools are created to address mental health, sometimes even undergoing evaluation for adoption and efficacy. In fact, a recent study reporting on National Health Interview Survey data (annually conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics) indicate that in 2024, 40% of adults reporting serious psychological distress used a digital health tool, up from 21% in 2017 and 10% in 2013. Given widespread access to digital tools and the potential of digital mental health, it is time for a new paradigm of care to address the mental health crisis in the United States. Reactive care, consisting largely of medication and counseling provided to those already experiencing severe or debilitating symptoms of mental anguish, is not adequate to address the needs of 22.8% of the U.S. population (>55 million people) experiencing symptoms of a mental illness, and the larger number of people with pre-clinical mental health concerns. A population mental-health approach is needed that includes early identification, intervention, and prevention, in addition to reactive care.

Delirium is a prevalent phenomenon among patients admitted to the geriatric intensive care unit (ICU) and can adversely impact prognosis and augment the risk of complications.

We developed My Kidneys & Me (MK&M), a digital health intervention (DHI) that delivers specialist health and lifestyle education, to improve self-management in people with chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Survivors of breast cancer often face challenges in maintaining physical activity (PA) and reducing sedentary behavior (SB), which are crucial for recovery and long-term health. Digital behavior change interventions (DBCIs) have emerged as promising tools to address these behavioral targets.

The National Health Service (NHS) in England is facing unprecedented demand for hospital services, with virtual wards (VW) being a central tenet of the strategy to manage these ongoing pressures on capacity. VWs combine digital and analog tools, monitoring systems, and teams of multidisciplinary care providers to support patients in their place of residence who might otherwise be cared for in a hospital. Despite virtual ward programs continuing to proliferate in the United Kingdom and across the globe, the models of care that support them are still evolving, and best practices in their design and implementation are yet to be fully established. It is therefore necessary to continue to gather evidence about the influences that shape their design and support their successful and sustained introduction.

Large language models (LLMs) can support health care professionals in their daily work, for example, when writing and filing reports or communicating diagnoses. With the rise of LLMs, current research investigates how LLMs could be applied in medical practice and their benefits for physicians in clinical workflows. However, most studies neglect the importance of selecting suitable LLM architectures.

Digital health has emerged as a transformative force in modern health care systems; these systems have witnessed a surge in technological innovations and solutions over the past 2 to 3 decades. Some studies have provided overviews of keywords and journals that shed light on the current state of digital health research, and there is an increasing focus on this field of study, even in the literature on business, management, and managerial challenges. Papers and reviews are needed on challenges in digital health related to organization, management, and adoption of technological innovations, as there are currently no formal analyses or structured reviews.