JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Respiratory dysfunction frequently occurs during the acute phase of stroke and is associated with reduced ventilatory capacity, respiratory muscle weakness, and increased pulmonary complications. However, delivering standardized respiratory training during hospitalization is often constrained by staffing and service continuity.

Anemia is a global health concern. It is disproportionately prevalent among pregnant women in low-resource regions, where iron deficiency is the leading cause. Given the multifactorial nature of anemia, a range of nutritional interventions is recommended. However, effective implementation is often hindered by limited health care access, poor adherence to supplementation, and gaps in nutrition knowledge and counseling. To address these challenges and optimize hemoglobin (Hb) levels among pregnant women, mobile health (mHealth)−based nutritional interventions offer a promising alternative.

There is growing recognition of the role of health apps in addressing health care system challenges, yet app quality and evidence vary widely, and consumers have little decision support at the point of download.

Problematic social media use has been linked to reduced well-being and impulse control difficulties. While digital self-control apps show potential for reducing general app usage, they often lack customization, leading to limited effectiveness and increased user resistance. Their impact on problematic social media use remains uncertain.

Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are common and negatively impact both individuals with dementia and their families. Although nonpharmacological interventions are recommended as the first-line treatments, their use in community settings is limited by access and caregiver resources. Existing approaches are often not individualized and rely on institutional or clinician-led delivery.

Informal caregivers are essential in supporting community-dwelling older adults, especially as global populations age. However, caregiving responsibilities often result in high stress, depressive symptoms, and diminished quality of life. Traditional support services are fragmented, and many programs overlook caregivers’ emotional and informational needs. Telecare—the remote delivery of health and social care via digital technologies—offers a promising approach to provide accessible, personalized, and timely support.

Over-the-counter (OTC) medicines are frequently used during pregnancy. As these medicines are often used without medical supervision, accessible and reliable safety information is essential. However, finding reliable and understandable information on the safety of these medicines during pregnancy is often experienced as difficult. Hence, there is a need for a new easily accessible electronic health (eHealth) tool that empowers women to actively seek information to support safer self-medication practices during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Overweight and obesity, as defined by the World Health Organization, correspond to BMI values of 25-29.9 kg/m² for overweight and ≥30 kg/m² for obesity. Both conditions remain major public health challenges worldwide due to their strong link with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension, which place a heavy clinical and economic burden on health care systems. In Canada, obesity rates are notably high, with vulnerable populations disproportionately affected due to socioeconomic barriers, limited access to preventive care, and higher comorbidity rates. Calorie-counting Mobile health (mHealth) apps support dietary self-monitoring and weight control; however, varied designs and evidence complicate assessment of feasibility and effectiveness.

Technology-based solutions to support the mental health needs of workers are on the rise, as evidenced by the growing body of research related to e–mental health apps implemented with workers or within the context of workplaces. This expanding landscape of evidence related to mental health apps underscores the necessity of summarizing and consolidating the different ways in which studies are evaluating real-world technology-based interventions in a complex setting such as a workplace.

Wearable fitness trackers have become a valuable tool in public health research due to their ability to collect large-scale, individual-level data at a low cost. Because of this, wearables have the potential to mitigate the urgent need for health research in low-resource settings. However, their use has been largely limited to high-income settings, and a major challenge remains: high rates of missing data. This problem may be exacerbated in low-resource environments where logistical and operational barriers further complicate data collection. Wearable sleep data collected in an urban informal settlement in Uganda during The Onward Project on Well-being and Adversity project revealed substantial challenges related to missingness in low-resource research settings.

College-aged students face persistent academic and social stress that adversely affects their mental and physical health. Digital phenotyping with wearable devices enables real-time stress monitoring from continuous physiological signals, supporting just-in-time therapeutic interventions to improve student well-being. Despite rapid advances in wearables and analytical methods, it remains unclear which devices, physiological signals, and machine learning or deep learning approaches are most commonly used for stress detection in this population.

Suboptimal adoption and engagement rates of digital health applications present challenges to their effectiveness, particularly in chronic disease management such as fibromyalgia. Up to half of patients do not download the prescribed digital health applications or actively engage with them, making effective onboarding a critical opportunity for improvement.