JMIR mHealth and uHealth

E-health is an increasingly utilized method of healthcare in the field of psycho-oncology. While many reports highlight the positive impact of psychological e-health tools, there are patients who refuse to use them.

Mobile health (mHealth) apps have shown promise to support recovery from substance use disorders. However, evidence on engagement and efficacy is still inconclusive.

The use of mobile apps in oncology has been expanding rapidly, encompassing prevention, treatment, and patient support. These technologies hold significant potential to improve care delivery and enhance the efficiency of health care services. However, their integration into clinical practice faces important challenges. A key issue lies in the difficulties health care professionals (HCPs) encounter when selecting apps that adequately meet their specific needs and comply with appropriate standards of quality and clinical effectiveness. This lack of robust evidence on the availability, adoption, and evaluation of mobile apps designed for cancer care professionals not only hinders their wider adoption but also restricts their potential to serve as reliable tools in oncology practice.

Driven by technological advancements, the proliferation of mobile sports and health applications (apps) has revolutionized health management by improving efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility. While the widespread adoption of these platforms has transformed public health practices and social well-being in China, emerging evidence suggests that inadequacies in their privacy policies may compromise personal information (PI) protection.

Wearable devices enable the remote collection of health parameters, supporting the outpatient plans recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to manage chronic diseases. While disease-specific monitoring is accurate, a comprehensive analysis of wearables across various chronic diseases helps to standardize remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems.

Smoking is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity across the global. Efforts to reduce smoking prevalence have used text-message based interventions, which typically send participants a series of short, informational, motivational and practical messages over a set period. Evidence highlights the efficacy of using this approach to support smoking cessation, with such trials typically reporting the average treatment effects, in which causal inference is made regarding the average effect of a treatment on a heterogeneous sample. Nonetheless, using this approach to assessing treatment effects means we are unable to account for individual factors that impact the effectiveness of a treatment on outcomes, such as age, gender, and genetics.

Previous research has attempted to determine the minimum number of days of accelerometry required to reliably reflect an individual’s physical activity. However, human behaviors on a day-to-day basis can be highly variable. As a consequence, the number of days required to reliably predict habitual physical activity is dependent on the variability that exists within an individual. There is a concern that adopting generic recommendations from previous research could provide unreliable estimates by failing to represent individuals with specific physical activity patterns.

Mobile health (mHealth) interventions show promise in supporting tobacco cessation. However, Black adults who use tobacco products are not well represented in mHealth studies for tobacco cessation and their preferred features of mHealth apps are not well known. Identifying types of mHealth app features for tobacco cessation preferred by Black adults is critical to developing a culturally adapted app, with increased uptake by the target population

The use of mobile health apps (mHealth apps) can assist with the management of gestational diabetes. Although a number of studies have demonstrated their efficacy in improving maternal–foetal outcomes, opinions differ regarding their usability and overall quality. Poorly designed apps, with ill-conceived features or inappropriate content, may pose a threat to patient safety. Nevertheless, very few studies provide in-depth evaluations of app-design quality, and the diversity of features and techniques employed remains insufficiently explored.

Integrating electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) into electronic health records (EHRs) can enhance the quality of patient care. However, collecting longitudinal ePRO data throughout treatment and posttreatment surveillance remains challenging in patients with breast cancer. To address this, we implemented an automated system that enables ePRO acquisition and seamless integration into the EHR. The system delivers questionnaire weblinks via a mobile messaging app, allowing patients to complete ePROs before clinic visits, with responses automatically transferred to the EHR.

Young African American men who have sex with men (AAMSM) experience disproportionately high HIV incidence and are less likely to achieve viral suppression compared to White men who have sex with men, an outcome that relies on antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence. We created My Personal Health Guide, a talking relational agent–based mobile health app to improve ART adherence among young AAMSM.

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) guidelines recommend early postoperative mobilization to reduce complications, but adherence is often suboptimal, highlighting the need for effective tools to monitor and encourage movement. The Mindray ePM/ep pod, capable of tracking activity, vital signs, sleep, and pain, offers high-precision postoperative monitoring and is well-suited for research on activity feedback.