JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Digital interventions provide a scalable approach to promote healthy lifestyles, but at-scale evidence of their effects and effect modifiers is limited—even scarcer for habit-based digital interventions, although habits are promising lifestyle intervention targets.

The timed up-and-go (TUG) test is a mobility-related functional task commonly performed in clinical practice for a variety of clinical applications. By instrumenting the TUG test with sensors, creating an instrumented TUG (iTUG), additional parameters can be extracted, which may add clinical value. Instrumented insoles are among the most promising wearable devices that are currently being explored for clinical purposes.

Relaxation-based mobile health (mHealth) interventions hold strong potential to address perioperative anxiety and pain management in a scalable manner. However, there is limited research on how surgical patients engage with these interventions and what aspects may be most helpful.

Walking is one of the most effective forms of physical activity; however, maintaining long-term engagement in digital step-counting interventions remains challenging.

Approximately 2.5 billion adults worldwide were living with overweight or obesity as of 2022, highlighting the need for comprehensive weight management solutions. Digital nutrition platforms have emerged as an accessible solution that can be implemented at scale. Nutrium Care is an employer-sponsored program delivered via the Nutrium platform, facilitating dietitian-led nutrition counseling through consultations and in-app communication, while also enabling users to track food intake, water consumption, and physical activity.

The use of electronic headache diaries via smartphone apps has several advantages over paper and pencil diaries. Still, adherence is not always satisfactory. One potential strategy to improve adherence is the implementation of daily reminders, but their effect remains uncertain.

Nationwide electronic health records (EHRs) are intended to strengthen patient empowerment and improve information continuity across health care settings. In Germany, the electronic patient record (elektronische Patientenakte [ePA]) transitioned from an opt-in to an opt-out model in 2025. Initial survey data suggest that technical complexity and access requirements may hinder engagement; yet, little is known about how users experience this access process.

Health care professionals must consider multiple dimensions of prevention when consulting with adolescents. Identifying risky behaviors early in adolescence is crucial for reducing both morbidity and mortality. General practitioners are increasingly eager to incorporate digital tools for prevention into their consultations with adolescents; however, the relevance and clinical validity of these digital tools are not always established or well-known. Consequently, primary care professionals require guidance and support in selecting relevant mobile health (mHealth) tools.

Radiographic knee osteoarthritis (ROA) is associated with abnormal plantar loading and altered gait coordination. Insole-based plantar-pressure sensing offers a practical wearable approach to ROA identification, but existing methods typically use either conventional biomechanical descriptors or end-to-end temporal models. An interpretable subject-level framework that captures both local abnormalities and distributed coordination is, therefore, needed.

Infections are a major health concern in hospitalized patients. Fever is an early sign of infection, making temperature monitoring essential for infection surveillance. Wearable devices are increasingly being explored for continuous temperature monitoring in acute care hospitals, but how temperature data from wearables are monitored, presented, and used to support fever or infection management in clinical practice remains poorly understood.

Reliable measurement of smartphone screen time is important for research examining associations between digital media use and health outcomes. Although objective monitoring tools reduce bias associated with self-report, the number of monitoring days required to reliably estimate typical smartphone use remains unclear. This question is particularly important for study design because longer monitoring periods increase participant burden and the likelihood of missing data.

Mobile health (mHealth) and online video are increasingly central to cardiology education and point-of-care decision support. However, little is known about how simple design choices, such as mobile-first web layouts and captioned videos, translate into real-world practice across countries with different income levels.