Journal of Medical Internet Research

Lifestyle modifications are a key part of type 2 diabetes mellitus treatment. Many patients find long-term self-management difficult, and mobile apps could be a solution. In 2010, in the United States, a mobile app was approved as an official medical device. Similar apps have entered the Japanese market but are yet to be classified as medical devices.

Internet gaming disorder among university students has become a great concern for university counsellors worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic. The factors influencing the development of internet gaming disorder in students during the COVID-19 pandemic could be different from those before the pandemic.

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Rapid and accurate diagnosis is crucial for minimizing brain damage and optimizing treatment plans.

Prompt engineering, focusing on crafting effective prompts to large language models (LLMs), has garnered attention for its capabilities at harnessing the potential of LLMs. This is even more crucial in the medical domain due to its specialized terminology and language technicity. Clinical natural language processing applications must navigate complex language and ensure privacy compliance. Prompt engineering offers a novel approach by designing tailored prompts to guide models in exploiting clinically relevant information from complex medical texts. Despite its promise, the efficacy of prompt engineering in the medical domain remains to be fully explored.

Early detection of sleep apnea, the health condition where airflow either ceases or decreases episodically during sleep, is crucial to initiate timely interventions and avoid complications. Wearable artificial intelligence (AI), the integration of AI algorithms into wearable devices to collect and analyze data to offer various functionalities and insights, can efficiently detect sleep apnea due to its convenience, accessibility, affordability, objectivity, and real-time monitoring capabilities, thereby addressing the limitations of traditional approaches such as polysomnography.

ChatGPT (OpenAI) has shown great potential in clinical diagnosis and could become an excellent auxiliary tool in clinical practice. This study investigates and evaluates ChatGPT in diagnostic capabilities by comparing the performance of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.0 across model iterations.

Digital mental health interventions are routinely integrated into mental health services internationally and can contribute to reducing the global mental health treatment gap identified by the World Health Organization. Research teams designing and delivering evaluations frequently invest substantial effort in deliberating on ethical and legal challenges around digital mental health interventions. In this article, we reflect on our own research experience with digital mental health intervention design and evaluation to identify 8 of the most critical challenges that we or others have faced, and that have ethical or legal consequences. These include: (1) harm caused by online recruitment work; (2) monitoring of intervention safety; (3) exclusion of specific demographic or clinical groups; (4) inadequate robustness of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness findings; (5) adequately conceptualizing and supporting engagement and adherence; (6) structural barriers to implementation; (7) data protection and intellectual property; and (8) regulatory ambiguity relating to digital mental health interventions that are medical devices. As we describe these challenges, we have highlighted serious consequences that can or have occurred, such as substantial delays to studies if regulations around Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) are not fully understood, or if regulations change substantially during the study lifecycle. Collectively, the challenges we have identified highlight a substantial body of required knowledge and expertise, either within the team or through access to external experts. Ensuring access to knowledge requires careful planning and adequate financial resources (for example, paying public contributors to engage in debate on critical ethical issues or paying for legal opinions on regulatory issues). Access to such resources can be planned for on a per-study basis and enabled through funding proposals. However, organizations regularly engaged in the development and evaluation of digital mental health interventions should consider creating or supporting structures such as advisory groups that can retain necessary competencies, such as in medical device regulation.

Acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) are associated with high mortality, morbidity, and poor quality of life and constitute a substantial burden to patients and health care systems. New approaches to prevent or reduce the severity of AECOPD are urgently needed. Internationally, this has prompted increased interest in the potential of remote patient monitoring (RPM) and digital medicine. RPM refers to the direct transmission of patient-reported outcomes, physiological, and functional data, including heart rate, weight, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, physical activity, and lung function (spirometry), directly to health care professionals through automation, web-based data entry, or phone-based data entry. Machine learning has the potential to enhance RPM in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by increasing the accuracy and precision of AECOPD prediction systems.

With the exacerbation of population aging, the health issues of middle-aged and older adults have increasingly become a focus of attention. The widespread use of the internet has created conditions for promoting the health of this demographic. However, little is known about the effects of information access in promoting the relationship between internet use and the health of middle-aged and older adults.

Male factory workers in China are vulnerable to HIV transmission. Commercial and nonmarital noncommercial contacts are the driving forces of heterosexual HIV transmission among male factory workers in China. There is a lack of effective HIV interventions for male factory workers in China.

Anti-Asian hate crimes escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, limited research has explored the association between social media sentiment and hate crimes toward Asian communities.

Video telehealth offers a mechanism to help Veterans Health Administration (VHA) patients overcome health care access barriers; however, many veterans lack a suitable device and sufficient internet connectivity. To address disparities in technology access, VHA established a Connected Device Program that offers veterans loaned video-capable tablets and internet service. In 2020, VHA introduced a national Digital Divide Consult to facilitate and standardize referrals for this resource.