The Digital First Primary Care (DFPC) model, introduced by NHS England, aims to enhance healthcare accessibility and efficiency by leveraging digital tools such as telemedicine, digital triage, and virtual consultations. In this structured narrative review, we synthesized UK-focused empirical, policy, and implementation literature to examine DFPC through the patient-centered care (PCC) domains of access, autonomy, […]
The economics of digitally integrated wellness services in heritage regions
Wellness tourism is among the fastest-growing segments of the global health economy, yet its development in Central Asian heritage regions remains constrained by fragmented service delivery, limited digital infrastructure, and a shortage of evidence-based planning tools. In this Perspective, we argue that advancing wellness tourism in such regions requires coupling econometric diagnosis of revenue drivers […]
Screening anxiety via contrastive autobiographical recall
IntroductionLanguage offers a low-burden and scalable pathway for digital anxiety screening, particularly in telehealth or repeated-monitoring settings where spontaneous speech may already be available. This study introduces a contrastive autobiographical recall framework that uses short positive and negative personal memories to capture within person affective shifts in language. By modelling how the same individual expresses […]
DFU-GCNet: a global context-enhanced inception network for robust and interpretable diabetic foot ulcer classification
IntroductionDiabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are severe complications that cause frequent lower extremity amputations. Timely diagnosis is crucial for effective clinical management. Although deep learning approaches improve detection, the models often struggle to capture different lesion scales. Furthermore, opaque algorithmic decisions often lower medical trust. Therefore, this study introduces DFU-GCNet for robust and interpretable ulcer classification.MethodsThe […]
Resources consumption and environmental impacts of the DYNAMIC digital health intervention aimed at improving quality of care for sick children in Tanzania: a life cycle assessment
BackgroundHealth systems contribute to an important part of planetary boundaries overshoot, the effect of its rapid digitalization being however not well known. DYNAMIC is a Tanzanian digital health project, aimed at improving quality of care for sick children at primary care level through the provision of a tablet-based clinical decision support algorithm for clinicians. We […]
In-network multidisciplinary digital care improves outcomes in medicare advantage members with musculoskeletal diagnoses
IntroductionMusculoskeletal (MSK) conditions are a major cost driver for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. Digital health can improve access to preventive treatments like exercise therapy, but adoption has been challenging in older populations. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a novel, multidisciplinary virtual integrated practice unit (V-IPU) for MA members with MSK conditions.MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed 308 […]
Best practices and challenges in executing large scale pilots for eHealth deployment and managing innovation: the GATEKEEPER experience
The large-scale deployment of digital health solutions requires robust operational frameworks capable of coordinating heterogeneous settings, diverse stakeholders, and complex technical infrastructures. However, actionable guidance for executing federated, multinational eHealth pilots remains limited in the implementation literature. Methods: Using a mixed-methods approach, including iterative focus groups, co-creation sessions, and a Delphi study, we developed and […]
Using objective measures of physical activity, sleep, and breathing for disease profiling of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s disease
BackgroundPatients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren’s disease (SjD) often report disrupted sleep, excessive fatigue, and decreased physical activity. Symptom assessment and their impact on daily life relies heavily on subjective measures, which are limited. Investigating novel digital biomarkers could facilitate continuous monitoring of symptoms such as sleep disturbances and reduced physical capacity to […]
Automated emotion recognition via video-based semantic embeddings
IntroductionAutomated emotion recognition systems often rely on acted datasets and categorical models that miss the nuance of spontaneous affect.MethodsThis work assembled a large corpus of authentic facial emotion expressions from naturalistic outpatient psychotherapy sessions, annotated with free-text descriptions by human labelers. These descriptions were embedded in a 768-dimensional semantic space using a fine-tuned German Sentence-BERT […]
Practical applications of gamification in patient-centered outcomes research and digital health, and its acceptance in clinical trials
BackgroundThe application of game elements to engage participants and improve data collection for clinical trials is relatively novel, with limited research around the impact of gamification in clinical research. This article explores published literature and surveys from patients and clinical sites.MethodsA targeted literature review was completed in November 2025 to identify published articles (≤10 years) […]
Text-guided few-shot liver and tumor segmentation
IntroductionHigh-precision liver and tumor segmentation is a cornerstone of digital oncology, yet its clinical deployment remains constrained by two persistent challenges: the scarcity of pixel-level annotations and severe performance degradation under cross-center domain shift. Although few shot learning offers a promising direction for data-efficient modeling, existing approaches relying solely on visual similarity often fail to […]
Bridging the data–power paradox: a conceptual–empirical analysis of solar-powered digital health systems in low-resource settings
BackgroundDigital health technologies are increasingly promoted as key enablers of health system strengthening in low-resource settings. However, their effectiveness is often constrained by inadequate infrastructure, particularly unreliable energy supply. This misalignment between digital innovation and infrastructural readiness can be conceptualized as the “Data–Power Paradox,” whereby investments in digital health systems are undermined by unreliable electricity […]