JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Access to oral health promotion for older adults is globally limited, especially in rural, low- and middle-income settings. Digital research often lacks theoretical foundation and focuses primarily on younger cohorts, yielding few randomized trials evaluating accessible tools for oral health education in older adults.

The management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) places a significant burden on health care systems worldwide. Home noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) is an established treatment option associated with significant benefits for patients with COPD and hypercapnic chronic respiratory failure. Internet of Things (IoT)–based management may improve communication between patients and physicians and strengthen the integration and comprehensiveness of home NPPV telemonitoring. However, the economic value of such systems remains insufficiently understood.

Digital tools are known to promote public health interventions such as vaccine delivery. The recommendation that health care professionals (HCPs) use vaccination-related mobile apps or web-based applications has contributed to improving vaccine awareness and acceptance in the United States. The state of Texas, which has one of the lowest human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates, has seen a significant increase in HPV vaccine hesitancy, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the past 2 decades, global rates of cannabis use have risen significantly, especially among young adults. This has corresponded to an increase in cannabis-related problems and hospitalizations. Thus, there has been significant interest in developing new interventions that can help facilitate cannabis cessation and reduce hospitalization rates. Specifically, mobile apps have emerged as scalable and accessible stand-alone or adjunct interventions that can help individuals with cannabis use disorders.

Nutrition apps offer scalable opportunities to support dietary behavior change and prevent chronic diseases. Their success depends on sustained user engagement, which is essential yet challenging to achieve and, consequently impacts the long-term effectiveness of these digital tools. Engagement strategies have been widely explored in digital health, but a comprehensive synthesis focusing on nutrition apps for adults is lacking.

Continuous follow-up for patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) is essential for treatment decisions and a better prognosis. There remains limited evidence regarding the critical issue of depression variation trajectory prediction using mobile health (mHealth) measures. Moreover, the temporal dynamics of mHealth measures have not been fully modeled in previous studies, and the poor patient adherence to mHealth records poses great challenges to the dynamic feature modeling.

In the management of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), the usual medical treatment requires frequent visits for glucose monitoring and insulin dose adjustment, and this imposes significant physical, psychological, and economic burdens on pregnant women. As mobile health platforms become increasingly integrated into diabetes care, telemedicine may help alleviate these burdens; however, evidence evaluating its effectiveness as a replacement for routine in-person GDM care remains limited.

Low anterior resection syndrome (LARS) is a common postoperative complication in patients with low rectal cancer, presenting with a spectrum of bowel dysfunction symptoms, including urgency, incontinence, evacuation disorders, and changes in stool frequency. Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) can alleviate LARS, but its effectiveness may be limited by poor accuracy of technique and low adherence during home-based training due to a lack of real-time feedback and monitoring devices.

Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) use are critical for improving survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Although conventional training methods are initially effective, they are often hampered by rapid skill decay over time. Game-based mobile apps have emerged as a promising and scalable alternative for CPR and AED education; however, evidence of their long-term efficacy remains scarce.

Problematic smartphone use among adolescents is a growing public health concern closely associated with psychological distress and loneliness. Effective, culturally grounded, school-based interventions are needed.

Being overweight and obese are major health concerns worldwide, contributing to lifestyle-related diseases such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Increasing physical activity is an effective strategy for weight management. However, earlier step count studies have remained limited to small populations, short-term measurements of 1‐2 weeks, and mainly cross-sectional comparisons of average step counts. The effects of long-term step count changes on weight loss remain unclear.

Healthy aging has emerged as a global priority. However, older adults’ participation in health promotion programs remains low, and traditional health promotion models have achieved limited success in fostering sustained engagement among this population. Mobile health (mHealth)–based gamification interventions offer a promising way to address these challenges. However, no published reviews support or oppose the use of mHealth-based gamification interventions as health promotion strategies in older adults.