JMIR Nursing
Virtualizing care from hospital to community: Mobile health, telehealth, and digital patient care
Editor-in-Chief:
Elizabeth Borycki RN, PhD, FIAHIS, FACMI, FCAHS
Recent Articles

Person-centered care responsive to individual preferences, needs, and values is recognized as an important aspect of high-quality health care, and patient empowerment is increasingly viewed as a central core value of person-centered care. Web-based interventions aimed at empowerment report a beneficial effect on patient empowerment and physical activity; however, there is limited information available on barriers, facilitators, and user experiences. A recent review of the effect of digital self-management support tools suggests a beneficial effect on the quality of life in patients with cancer. On the basis of an overall philosophy of empowerment, guided self-determination is a person-centered intervention that uses preparatory reflection sheets to help achieve focused communication between patients and nurses. The intervention was adapted into a digital version called digitally assisted guided self-determination (DA-GSD) hosted by the Sundhed DK website that can be delivered face-to-face, via video, or by the combination of the 2 methods.

Continuous monitoring of vital signs (CMVS) using wearable wireless sensors is increasingly available to patients in general wards and can improve outcomes and reduce nurse workload. To assess the potential impact of such systems, successful implementation is important. We developed a CMVS intervention and implementation strategy and evaluated its success in 2 general wards.

Children with growth hormone deficiency face the prospect of long-term recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH) treatment requiring daily injections. Adherence to treatment is important, especially at treatment initiation, to achieve positive health outcomes. Historically, telenursing services embedded in patient support programs (PSPs) have been a valid approach to support r-hGH treatment initiation and patient education and facilitate adherence by identifying and optimizing appropriate injection techniques. The development of mobile phones with augmented reality (AR) capabilities offers nurses new tools to support patient education.

A clinician’s biased behavior toward patients can affect the quality of care. Recent literature reviews report on widespread implicit biases among clinicians. Although emerging studies in hospital settings show racial biases in the language used in clinical documentation within electronic health records, no studies have yet investigated the extent of judgment language in home health care.


Emergency departments use triage to ensure that patients with the highest level of acuity receive care quickly and safely. Triage is typically a nursing process that is documented as structured and unstructured (free text) data. Free-text triage narratives have been studied for specific conditions but never reviewed in a comprehensive manner.

Regular blood testing is an integral part of systemic anticancer therapy delivery. Blood tests are required before every administration of treatment to ensure that a patient is sufficiently well to receive it. Blood testing is burdensome for patients as they require either an extra visit within 48 hours of planned administration of treatment or a significantly long visit if performed on the day of treatment. The additional time for appointments can have a significant impact on the quality of life of someone who is living with cancer. In the United Kingdom, the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented disruption to the delivery of cancer care. Face-to-face hospital visits were reduced, resulting in the need to develop more innovative ways of working to minimize treatment interruptions. This led to significant uptake of digital technologies, with new models of care rapidly deployed across the UK health service to meet these challenges.

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in profound loss of life among older adults living in long-term care (LTC) homes. As a pandemic response, LTC homes enforced infection control processes, including isolating older adults in their rooms, canceling therapeutic programs, and restricting family member visits. Social isolation negatively impacts older adults in LTC, which may result in increased rates of anxiety, depression, physical and cognitive decline, disorientation, fear, apathy, and premature death. Isolation of older adults can also cause an increase in responsive behaviors (eg, yelling, hitting, calling out) to express frustration, fear, restricted movement, and boredom. To respond to the challenges in LTC and support frontline staff, older adults, and family members, a novel registered practical nurse (RPN)-led delivery of the PIECES approach for addressing responsive behaviors among older adults with dementia using virtual training/mentoring was implemented in Canadian LTC homes. PIECES employs a person- and family/care partner–centered collaborative team-based approach to provide education and capacity-building for nurses; engages families as active participants in care; and embeds evidence-informed practices to provide person- and family-centered care to older adults with complex needs, including dementia.

Taiwan has insufficient nursing resources due to the high turnover rate of health care providers. Therefore, reducing the heavy workload of these employees is essential. Herein, speech transcription, which has various potential clinical applications, was employed for the documentation of nursing records. The requirement of including only one speaker per transcription facilitated data collection and system development. Moreover, authorization from patients was unnecessary.

Digital health literacy is the use of information and communication technology to support health and health care. Digital health literacy is becoming increasingly important as individuals continue to seek medical advice from various web-based sources, especially social media, during the pandemics such as COVID-19.

The nursing role significantly changed following reforms in the nurse training process. Nowadays, nurses are increasingly trained to promote and improve the quality of clinical practice and to provide support in the assistance of patients and communities. Opportunities and threats are emerging as a consequence of the introduction of new disruptive technologies in public health, which requires the health care staff to develop new digital skills.

Patient mobility is an evidenced-based physical activity intervention initiated during intensive care unit (ICU) admission and continued throughout hospitalization to maintain functional status, yet mobility is a complex intervention and not consistently implemented. Cognitive work analysis (CWA) is a useful human factors framework for understanding complex systems and can inform future technology design to optimize outcomes.
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