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 4.95

JMIR mHealth and uHealth (JMU, ISSN 2291-5222; Impact Factor: 4.95) is a leading peer-reviewed journal and one of the flagship journals of JMIR Publications. JMU has published since 2013 and was the first mhealth journal indexed in PubMed. In June 2022, JMU received a Journal Impact Factor™ from Clarivate of 4.95 (5-year Journal Impact Factor™: 5.65) and continues to be a Q1 journal in the category of ‘Healthcare Sciences and Services’. It is indexed in all major literature indices including MEDLINE, PubMedPubMed Central, Scopus, Psycinfo, SCIE, JCR, EBSCO/EBSCO Essentials, DOAJ, GoOA and others.

JMU 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, professional production of PDF, XHTML, and XML proofs.

As all JMIR journals, JMU encourages Open Science principles and strongly encourages 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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Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA)

Various populations with chronic conditions are at risk for decreased cognitive performance, making assessment of their cognition important. Formal mobile cognitive assessments measure cognitive performance with greater ecological validity than traditional laboratory-based testing but add to participant task demands. Given that responding to a survey is considered a cognitively demanding task itself, information that is passively collected as a by-product of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) may be a means through which people’s cognitive performance in their natural environment can be estimated when formal ambulatory cognitive assessment is not feasible. We specifically examined whether the item response times (RTs) to EMA questions (eg, mood) can serve as approximations of cognitive processing speed.

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Wearables and MHealth Reviews

In recent years, there has been a rise in the use of conversational agents for lifestyle medicine, in particular for weight-related behaviors and cardiometabolic risk factors. Little is known about the effectiveness and acceptability of and engagement with conversational and virtual agents as well as the applicability of these agents for metabolic syndrome risk factors such as an unhealthy dietary intake, physical inactivity, diabetes, and hypertension.

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Usability of Apps and User Perceptions of mHealth

Chatbots are an emerging technology that show potential for mental health care apps to enable effective and practical evidence-based therapies. As this technology is still relatively new, little is known about recently developed apps and their characteristics and effectiveness.

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Wearables and MHealth Reviews

Microrandomized trials (MRTs) have emerged as the gold standard for the development and evaluation of multicomponent, adaptive mobile health (mHealth) interventions. However, not much is known about the state of participant engagement measurement in MRTs of mHealth interventions.

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mHealth in the Developing World/LMICs, Underserved Communities, and for Global Health

Mobile health interventions are common in public health settings in Africa, and our preliminary work showed that smartphones are increasing in South Africa. We developed a novel smartphone app—CareConekta—that used GPS location data to characterize personal mobility to improve engagement in HIV care among pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV in South Africa. The app also used the user’s location to map nearby clinics.

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mHealth for Wellness, Behavior Change and Prevention

Following the need for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases, mobile health (mHealth) apps are increasingly used for promoting lifestyle behavior changes. Although mHealth apps have the potential to reach all population segments, providing accessible and personalized services, their effectiveness is often limited by low participant engagement and high attrition rates.

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Wearables and MHealth Viewpoints

Living in urban environments affects individuals’ mental health through different pathways. For instance, physical activity and social participation are seen as mediators. However, aiming to understand underlying mechanisms, it is necessary to consider that the individual is interacting with its environment. In this regard, this viewpoint discusses how urban health research benefits from integration of socioecological and interdisciplinary perspectives, combined with innovative ambulatory data assessments that enable researchers to integrate different data sources. It is stated that neither focusing on the objective and accurate assessment of the environment (from the perspective of spatial sciences) nor focusing on subjectively measured individual variables (from the public health as well as a psychosocial perspective) alone is suitable to further develop the field. Addressing person-place interactions requires an interdisciplinary view on the level of theory (eg, which variables should be focused on?), assessment methods (eg, combination of time-varying objective and subjective measures), as well as data analysis and interpretation. Firstly, this viewpoint gives an overview on previous findings addressing the relationship of environmental characteristics to physical activity and mental health outcomes. We emphasize the need for approaches that allow us to appropriately assess the real-time interaction between a person and a specific environment and examine within-subject associations. This requires the assessment of environmental features, the spatial-temporal behavior of the individual, and the subjective experiences of the situation together with other individual factors, such as momentary affective states. Therefore, we finally focused on triggered study designs as an innovative ambulatory data assessment approach that allows us to capture real-time data in predefined situations (eg, while walking through a specific urban area).

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mHealth for Screening

Requesting and disclosing HIV serostatus is associated with a reduction in HIV transmission among men who have sex with men (MSM). However, the reliability of common methods for HIV serostatus request and disclosure is inadequate. Validated approaches for requesting and disclosing HIV serostatus are necessary.

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Digital Biomarkers and Digital Phenotyping

Depressive and manic episodes within bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) involve altered mood, sleep, and activity, alongside physiological alterations wearables can capture.

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Wearables and MHealth Reviews

Mobile health (mHealth) apps can promote physical activity; however, the pragmatic nature (ie, how well research translates into real-world settings) of these studies is unknown. The impact of study design choices, for example, intervention duration, on intervention effect sizes is also understudied.

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mHealth in a Clinical Setting

Radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) can generate considerable physical and psychological discomfort under conscious sedation. App-based mindfulness meditation combined with an electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) shows promise as effective and accessible adjuncts in medical practice.

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