Advancements in healthcare have significantly improved the prospect of patients with CHD, with over 97% now surviving adulthood. This growing population requires lifelong care and support to manage their condition. Digital health innovations, such as the “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) tool, aim to empower patients and improve collaboration with clinicians.

In this pilot study, 70 patients were invited to participate, and 58 completed the questionnaire (response rate: 82.9%). Patients completed a digital question prompt list (QPL) prior to their consultations to select key topics from a predefined list of questions. Permission from the institution was obtained before conducting the pilot study.

Patients frequently selected questions related to prognosis, ageing, emotional well-being, lifestyle, and potential future interventions. The tool allowed for more personalised consultations and promoted active patient participation.

The AMA tool demonstrates feasibility in engaging ACHD patients and supporting shared decision-making. Further research is needed to optimise system integration and evaluate long-term outcomes.

Supporting a family member with cancer poses significant challenges for family caregivers, who have unmet supportive care needs. Psychosocial oncology professionals (PSOP) are often the primary source of support for cancer caregivers in Iran. Given the lack of supportive care resources, innovative strategies are needed to support caregivers. This study explores the views of PSOP and caregivers regarding the challenges, potential solutions, and the role of digital technologies in supporting caregivers.

Employing a qualitative descriptive design, we conducted individual interviews and focus groups with 30 participants (15 PSOPs and 15 caregivers), recruited from five settings in Tehran, Iran(2023-2024). All sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

PSOP identified challenges in delivering psychosocial care to caregivers , including inconsistency, uncertainty, and fragmented use of technology. Their recommendations included flexible psychosocial care via blended multi-modal digital technologies, professional development opportunities, and formal recognition and integration within the oncology setting. Caregivers experiencing frustration with the healthcare system expressed a need for family-centered care, flexible psychosocial care, and organized peer support networks.

Current psychosocial care in Iran is insufficient and misaligned with the preferences of PSOP and caregivers. PSOP and caregivers advocate for flexible psychosocial care through blended digital strategies. Public health strategists in Iran, as a low-resource setting with a family-centered context, should optimize resource utilization by prioritizing the training of PSOP, developing blended digital interventions, and leveraging trained peers to provide navigation and support to families, thereby easing the PSOP workload.

Physical activity (PA) promotion in primary healthcare is an effective way of addressing population-based physical inactivity. Advancements in technology could help overcome barriers to promoting PA. This scoping review aims to provide an overview of technology (digital health) for PA promotion in primary healthcare, including effectiveness and acceptability, from research published between January 2020 and December 2023.

A scoping review was conducted across five databases (Cochrane library, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed and WebofScience). Search terms focused on three components: PA counselling, technology and primary healthcare. Articles from 01/01/2020 to 05/12/2023 were included. Paediatric populations and populations with diseases requiring specialist care were excluded.

Of 2717 studies identified during database searches, twenty-nine were included in the review. Mobile-phone applications were the preferred method of implementation (n = 12, 52%), with most interventions aiding in assessment of PA levels (n = 16, 70%) and/or assisting in addressing it (via education, monitoring or support) (n = 22, 96%). Findings revealed mixed evidence on the effectiveness of digital health interventions in increasing PA but reported widespread acceptability of digital health interventions. Qualitative studies revealed three main themes desired by stakeholders: (1) ease of use, (2) complements pre-existing primary healthcare provision and (3) patient-centred.

Future research should focus on developing standardised approaches for assessing digital health interventions, exploring the impact on prescribing behaviours and addressing the desired features highlighted by stakeholders. Integration of technology in healthcare, including PA promotion, holds promise for enhancing access and facilitating widespread implementation.

To use the validated Online Quality Assessment Tool (OQAT) to assess the quality of online nutrition information.

The social networking platform was formerly known as Twitter (now X).

Utilising the Twitter search application programming interface (API; v1·1), all tweets that included the word ‘nutrition’, along with associated metadata, were collected on seven randomly selected days in 2021. Tweets were screened, those without a URL were removed and the remainder were grouped on retweet status. Articles (shared via URL) were assessed using the OQAT, and quality levels were assigned (low, satisfactory, high). Mean differences between retweeted and non-retweeted data were assessed by the Mann–Whitney U test. The Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test was used to compare information quality by source.

In total, 10 573 URL were collected from 18 230 tweets. After screening for relevance, 1005 articles were assessed (9568 were out of scope) sourced from professional blogs (n 354), news outlets (n 213), companies (n 166), personal blogs (n 120), NGO (n 60), magazines (n 55), universities (n 19) and government (n 18). Rasch measures indicated the quality levels: 0–3·48, poor, 3·49–6·3, satisfactory and 6·4–10, high quality. Personal and company-authored blogs were more likely to rank as poor quality. There was a significant difference in the quality of retweeted (n 267, sum of rank, 461·6) and non-retweeted articles (n 738, sum of rank, 518·0), U = 87 475, P= 0·006 but no significant effect of information source on quality.

Lower-quality nutrition articles were more likely to be retweeted. Caution is required when using or sharing articles, particularly from companies and personal blogs, which tend to be lower-quality sources of nutritional information.

Digital health technologies have been enhancing the capacity of healthcare providers and, thereby, the delivery of targeted health services. The Southeast Asia Region (SEAR) has invested in strengthening digital public health. Many digital health interventions have been implemented in public health settings but are rarely assessed using the holistic health technology assessment (HTA) approach.

A systematic literature review was performed to provide an overview of evaluations of digital public health interventions in the World Health Organization (WHO) SEAR. Searches were conducted on four electronic databases. Screening title abstracts and full texts was independently conducted by two reviewers, followed by data extraction. Dimensions of HTA were analyzed against the EUnetHTA Core Model 3.0. Quality assessment of included articles was conducted using the JBI Checklist for Economic Evaluation and Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards 2022 checklist to assess the reporting quality. The findings are presented using systematic evidence tables and bar charts.

Of the forty-three studies screened at the full-text stage, thirteen studies conducted across six countries were included in the analysis. Telemedicine and m-health interventions were assessed in ten studies. Nine studies conducted cost-effectiveness analysis, and five assessments were conducted from a societal perspective. Four studies utilized more than one perspective for the assessment. Health problem definition and current use of technology, description and technical characteristics of the technology, clinical effectiveness, costs, economic evaluation, and organizational aspects were assessed by all the studies, whereas legal aspects were least assessed.

The lack of HTAs on digital public health interventions in the region highlights the need for capacity-building efforts.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a specialized treatment that has a growing evidence base for binge-spectrum eating disorders. However, cost and workforce capacity limit wide-scale uptake of DBT since it involves over 20 in-person sessions with a trained professional (and six sessions for guided self-help format). Interventions translated for delivery through modern technology offer a solution to increase the accessibility of evidence-based treatments. We developed the first DBT-specific skills training smartphone application (Resilience: eDBT) for binge-spectrum eating disorders and evaluated its efficacy in a randomized clinical trial.

Participants reporting recurrent binge eating were randomized to Resilience (n = 287) or a waitlist (n = 289). Primary outcomes were objective binge eating episodes and global levels of eating disorder psychopathology. Secondary outcomes were behavioral and cognitive symptoms, psychological distress, and the hypothesized processes of change (mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance).

Intention-to-treat analyses showed that the intervention group reported greater reductions in objective binge eating episodes (incidence rate ratio = 0.69) and eating disorder psychopathology (d = −0.68) than the waitlist at 6 weeks. Significant group differences favoring the intervention group were also observed on secondary outcomes, except for subjective binge eating, psychological distress, and distress tolerance. Primary symptoms showed further improvements from 6 to 12 weeks. However, dropout rate was high (48%) among the intervention group, and engagement decreased over the study period.

A novel, low-intensity DBT skills training app can effectively reduce symptoms of eating disorders. Scalable apps like these may increase the accessibility of evidence-based treatments.

The aim of this study is to understand the path for establishing digital health technologies-health technology assessment (DHT-HTA) in India.

A rapid review of HTA and DHT frameworks on PubMed (MEDLINE) and Google Scholar was conducted to identify DHT-HTA guidelines, and HTA processes in India. MS-Excel template was created with key domains for assessing DHT in resource-constrained settings based on studies and reports identified. Responses received from seventeen experts with varying expertise in DHT, HTA, clinical, and research were contacted using an online form. Following the principles of qualitative research rooted on grounded theory approach, themes and domains were derived for a framework which was again circulated through participants. Weightage for each theme was assigned based on the frequency of responses and qualifiers were used to interpret results. Inductively derived themes from these responses were clubbed together to identify macro-level systems requirements, and finally pre-requisites for setting up DHT-HTA framework was synthesized.

HT are commonly perceived by experts (64.7 percent participants) as a technology strictly connected to health information. Real-world data (i.e., electronic health data) are recognized as a relevant tool in support of decision-making for clinical and managerial levels. Experts identified some pre-requisites for the establishment of DHT-HTA in the country in terms of infrastructure, contextual factors, training, finance, data security, and scale-up.

Our research not only identified the pre-requisites for the adoption of a DHT-HTA framework for India, but confirmed the need to address DHT-HTA’s acceptability among. Hospitals and health insurance providers.

In recent years, the importance of telemedicine has increased significantly. Especially in the field of echocardiography, virtual reality glasses offer the possibility of real-time data transmission without restrictions in the examination process. In particular, the care of critically ill newborns with suspected CHD might be improved by allowing a specialized paediatric cardiologist to remotely guide an echocardiographic examination. The current study aims to prove whether novices, under Google Glass guidance by a paediatric cardiologist, can perform an appropriate neonatal echocardiography.

The current study is a prospective monocentric single-blinded pilot study. Participants were supposed to perform two test runs: The first test run was “unguided” and the second test run was instructed via Google Glass. A validated training simulator for neonatal echocardiography “EchocomNeo, Echocom GmbH” was used. The study took place at the Leipzig Heart Center, Department of Pediatric Cardiology from April 2022 to November 2022.

A total of 21 medical students were enrolled. In total 252 views (126 views in each test run) were recorded. The overall performance was significantly higher in the Google Glass guided test run compared to “unguided” (structure score: 77.6% vs. 63.2%. p < 0.001 and quality score: 58.7% vs. 47.2%, p < 0.001). Also, the time was significantly lower in the Google Glass guided test run than in the unguided test run, p = 0.014.

Google Glass guidance by a paediatric cardiologist could optimize the performance of novices in echocardiography using a standardized neonatal echo-simulator with structural normal cardiac anatomy.