JMIR Human Factors

Hospital wayfinding is a well-documented source of patient stress, yet people with sensory, cognitive, or mobility-related needs face additional information barriers that generic wayfinding research rarely resolves. Information uncertainty, rather than a simple lack of signage, has recently been proposed as a unifying construct for locating and diagnosing these barriers across the patient journey.

The transition from psychiatric inpatient care to community settings is associated with heightened vulnerability and increased risk of adverse mental health outcomes. Understanding age-related differences in mental health status at discharge may inform the targeting of postdischarge interventions and potentially improve long-term outcomes.

Mixed reality and augmented reality technologies are increasingly being explored for intraoperative visualization, navigation, and surgical decision support. However, translation into routine surgical practice will depend not only on technical accuracy but also on whether these systems are usable, physically tolerable, and robust in the operating room environment. In this Viewpoint, we highlight 3 human factors domains that warrant greater attention in mixed reality surgical guidance: physical characteristics, dexterity and motor demands, and environmental factors. Published work has repeatedly drawn attention to challenges, including ergonomic burden, limited field of view, headset weight, visual and perceptual constraints, fatigue, and interaction burdens associated with gesture and voice control. These issues are often compounded by environmental conditions, such as noise, glare, crowding, and occlusion in real clinical settings. Although mixed reality may improve spatial awareness and reduce attention shifts in some settings, these benefits remain constrained by persistent usability, workflow, and environmental limitations. Viewed through a broader systems human factors lens, discussion remains concentrated mainly on user-device interaction and selected task-level issues, with comparatively less attention to team, organizational, training, and governance factors. We argue that future human factors research should move beyond technical validation alone and adopt a broader systems perspective that addresses user diversity, sterile and low-burden interaction, environmental resilience, and the wider conditions required for safe clinical integration. Such an approach is essential if mixed reality surgical guidance systems are to become safe, usable, and clinically adoptable.

The rapid growth of digital health technologies has highlighted the importance of eHealth literacy, which is crucial for navigating health information and tools such as telemedicine and eHealth records. However, older adults often have reservations about digital technologies and face barriers due to cognitive, sensory, and motor impairments, which hinder their ability to effectively use digital health applications. Despite its relevance, research on eHealth literacy in older populations is limited, with a particular gap in understanding how self-assessments of eHealth literacy correlate with health characteristics.

University students face substantial underserved mental health needs. Digital “front doors” that combine brief screening, decision support, and timely counselor follow-up may help close access and workflow gaps on campus. SISKA (Sistem Informasi Layanan Konseling Akademik “academic counseling information system”) was developed as an Android app with a counselor-facing web dashboard to support routine self-assessment, risk-tiering, just-in-time guidance, referral activation, and continuous follow-up within real university workflows.

Wellness4Teachers is a daily supportive text messaging program implemented to mitigate psychological distress and support teachers’ well-being in Canada.

Hospital-at-home (HaH) services are transformative for delivering acute care in a patient’s home, with support from a multidisciplinary team and remote monitoring technologies, and there is a growing demand for innovation and digital solutions. Digital twin (DT) technology offers the possibility of leveraging real-time data to personalize care, predict risk, and improve patient management. However, perceptions of the workforce regarding the application of HaH DTs remain underexplored, and addressing this is crucial for successful adoption and sustainability.

Digital health applications (digitale gesundheitsanwendungen; DiGA) were integrated into the German statutory health care system in 2020 and can be prescribed by physicians and psychotherapists. Nevertheless, their use within routine care, particularly in the treatment of mental disorders, remains limited. Previous research suggests that a lack of information and knowledge among health care providers and patients may contribute to these difficulties.

Stress is a widespread public health concern associated with cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, and reduced quality of life. Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs), delivered through smartphones, web platforms, and wearables, offer scalable support for stress management but often struggle to sustain user engagement. Evidence describing how adaptive, conversational, and context-aware mechanisms function together within stress-focused DMHIs remains fragmented.

Effective patient portal access and use require both digital navigation and understanding of clinical information. Health literacy and eHealth literacy reflect these different demands. Although the 2 constructs overlap, prior research often treats them as interchangeable. It remains unclear whether health literacy and eHealth literacy are associated differently across stages of portal engagement and patterns of portal use. A systematic review is therefore needed to identify consistent patterns across studies.

The competencies required of life sciences graduates to participate in clinical trial research teams are poorly defined.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by acute exacerbations that frequently result in hospitalization, highlighting the need for improved follow-up care. Hybrid care incorporates digital health strategies such as remote patient monitoring (RPM). This could offer the opportunity to detect early signs of disease worsening by remotely tracking selected health indicators. However, it is unknown how RPM can effectively be integrated into current practice.