JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Mobile and tablet apps, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, wearable computing, and domotics for health

Editor-in-Chief:

Lorraine R. Buis, PhD, MSI, Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, USA


Impact Factor 5.4 CiteScore 12.6

JMIR mHealth and uHealth (JMU, ISSN 2291-5222) is a leading peer-reviewed journal and one of the flagship journals of JMIR Publications. JMIR mHealth and uHealth has been published since 2013 and was the first mhealth journal indexed in PubMed. In June 2024, JMIR mHealth and uHealth received a Journal Impact Factor™ from Clarivate of 5.4 (5-year Journal Impact Factor™: 5.6) and received a CiteScore of 12.6, placing it in the 90th percentile (#13 of 138) as a Q1 journal in the field of Health Informatics. It is indexed in all major literature indices, including MEDLINE, PubMedPubMed Central, Scopus, Psycinfo, SCIE, JCR, EBSCO/EBSCO Essentials, DOAJ, GoOA and others.

JMIR mHealth and uHealth focuses on health and biomedical applications in mobile and tablet computing, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, wearable computing and domotics. 

The journal adheres to rigorous quality standards, involving a rapid and thorough peer-review process, professional copyediting, and professional production of PDF, XHTML, and XML proofs.

Like all JMIR journals, JMIR mHealth and uHealth encourages Open Science principles and strongly encourages the publication of a protocol before data collection. Authors who have published a protocol in JMIR Research Protocols get a discount of 20% on the Article Processing Fee when publishing a subsequent results paper in any JMIR journal.

Recent Articles

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Usability of Apps and User Perceptions of mHealth

Background: Although at the base of the pyramid-shaped organization of the Rwandan health system, Community Health Workers (CHWs) are central to the community-based management of disease outbreaks.

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mHealth for Wellness, Behavior Change and Prevention

Smartphone-based monitoring in natural settings provides opportunities to monitor mental health behaviors, including suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB). To date, most STB research using smartphones has primarily relied on collecting so-called "active" data, requiring participants to engage by completing surveys. Data collected passively from smartphone sensors and logs may offer an objectively measured representation of an individual's behavior, including smartphone screen time.

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mHealth for Data Collection and Research

SMS text messaging- and internet-based self-reporting systems can supplement existing vaccine safety surveillance systems, but real-world participation patterns have not been assessed at scale.

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Wearables and MHealth Viewpoints

This paper proposes an approach to assess digital health readiness in clinical settings to understand how prepared, experienced, and equipped individual people are to participate in digital health activities. Existing digital health literacy and telehealth prediction tools exist but do not assess technological aptitude for particular tasks or incorporate available electronic health record data to improve efficiency and efficacy. As such, we propose a multidomain digital health readiness assessment that incorporates a person’s stated goals and motivations for use of digital health, a focused digital health literacy assessment, passively collected data from the electronic health record, and a focused aptitude assessment for critical skills needed to achieve a person’s goals. This combination of elements should allow for easy integration into clinical workflows and make the assessment as actionable as possible for health care providers and in-clinic digital health navigators. Digital health readiness profiles could be used to match individuals with support interventions to promote the use of digital tools like telehealth, mobile apps, and remote monitoring, especially for those who are motivated but do not have adequate experience. Moreover, while effective and holistic digital health readiness assessments could contribute to increased use and greater equity in digital health engagement, they must also be designed with inclusivity in mind to avoid worsening known disparities in digital health care.

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Quality Evaluation and Descriptive Analysis/Reviews of Multiple Existing Mobile Apps

Mobile apps represent accessible and cost-effective tools to improve nutrition and prevent chronic diseases. However, most of these apps have been characterized as having limited functionality, raising concerns about their effectiveness, acceptability, and efficacy.

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Wearables and MHealth Reviews

Usability has been touted as one determiner of success of mobile health (mHealth) interventions. Multiple systematic reviews of usability assessment approaches for different mHealth solutions for physical rehabilitation are available. However, there is a lack of synthesis in this portion of the literature, which results in clinicians and developers devoting a significant amount of time and effort in analyzing and summarizing a large body of systematic reviews.

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mHealth for Wellness, Behavior Change and Prevention

Mobile health apps can facilitate access to effective treatment and therapeutic information services. However, the real-world effectiveness of mobile apps for smoking cessation and their potential impact in everyday settings remain unclear.

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mHealth for Rehabilitation

Health care professionals use mobile apps to support patients’ rehabilitation after total hip or knee arthroplasty. Understanding patient engagement in such mobile health interventions can help tailor these interventions to better support patients.

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mHealth for Rehabilitation

Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a safe, effective intervention for individuals with cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, a majority of eligible patients do not complete CR. Growing evidence suggests that home-based cardiac rehabilitation (HBCR) programs are comparable in effectiveness and safety with traditional center-based programs. More research is needed to explore different ways to deliver HBCR programs to patients with CVD.

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Wearables and MHealth Reviews

Wearable sensors are increasingly being explored in health care, including in cancer care, for their potential in continuously monitoring patients. Despite their growing adoption, significant challenges remain in the quality and consistency of data collected from wearable sensors. Moreover, preprocessing pipelines to clean, transform, normalize, and standardize raw data have not yet been fully optimized.

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Wearables and MHealth Viewpoints

Wearable monitors continue to play a critical role in scientific assessments of physical activity. Recently, research-grade monitors have begun providing raw data from photoplethysmography (PPG) alongside standard raw data from inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes). Raw PPG enables granular and transparent estimation of cardiovascular parameters such as heart rate, thus presenting a valuable alternative to standard PPG methodologies (most of which rely on consumer-grade monitors that provide only coarse output from proprietary algorithms). The implications for physical activity assessment are tremendous, since it is now feasible to monitor granular and concurrent trends in both movement and cardiovascular physiology using a single noninvasive device. However, new users must also be aware of challenges and limitations that accompany the use of raw PPG data. This viewpoint paper therefore orients new users to the opportunities and challenges of raw PPG data by presenting its mechanics, pitfalls, and availability, as well as its parallels and synergies with inertial sensors. This includes discussion of specific applications to the prediction of energy expenditure, activity type, and 24-hour movement behaviors, with an emphasis on areas in which raw PPG data may help resolve known issues with inertial sensing (eg, measurement during cycling activities). We also discuss how the impact of raw PPG data can be maximized through the use of open-source tools when developing and disseminating new methods, similar to current standards for raw accelerometer and gyroscope data. Collectively, our comments show the strong potential of raw PPG data to enhance the use of research-grade wearable activity monitors in science over the coming years.

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Wearable Devices and Sensors

The increasing prevalence of obesity necessitates innovative approaches to better understand this health crisis, particularly given its strong connection to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular conditions. Monitoring dietary behavior is crucial for designing effective interventions that help decrease obesity prevalence and promote healthy lifestyles. However, traditional dietary tracking methods are limited by participant burden and recall bias. Exploring microlevel eating activities, such as meal duration and chewing frequency, in addition to eating episodes, is crucial due to their substantial relation to obesity and disease risk.

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Preprints Open for Peer-Review

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