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Technology in various forms is being developed and applied to provide new solutions to the increasing prevalence of long‐term health conditions. This article describes the potential of telehealth and telecare applications in response to increased demands for health and social care. The impact of technology on provision of person‐centred treatment and self‐management is described using the emergent results from the SMART2 project. SMART2 is a multi‐disciplinary collaboration which spans academia, health providers and people with long‐term conditions.

Describe the design of a health information and technology educational intervention that promotes health information sharing and technology use for older adult African Americans to support access to health information. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The study team developed a novel method to design the intervention. It drew upon three approaches: intergenerational technology transfer, participatory design and community-based participatory research.

Older adult African Americans (55+) with diabetes and young adults (18–54) connected to them via familial or naturally occurring social networks designed the intervention, which was conducted in the two study sites in Michigan, USA. In total, 29 participants helped design the intervention. Four themes emerged concerning factors that promote intergenerational information exchange in the context of technology and health. First, focus on one technology skill. Second, working together in small groups is preferred. Third, patience is essential. Last, physical capabilities (i.e., eyesight, operating on relatively small screens) and literacy levels should be considered.

This novel method of having participants from the sample population select the health information materials and technology exercises serves as a guide for implementing health information and education interventions aimed at technology use to support self-management for vulnerable patient populations.

The use of supportive digital technology – the provision of supportive services and self-management health tools using digital platforms – by marketers is increasing alongside research interest in the topic. However, little is known about the motivations to use these tools and which tool features provide different forms of social support (informational, emotional, instrumental, network or esteem). The purpose of this paper is thus to explore consumer perceptions of supportive healthcare self-management and preferences for different levels of interactive features as social support in a health services context.

A qualitative approach involving 30 semi-structured interviews with consumers interested in two common preventative health services that use supportive digital tools (SDTs) (skin-cancer checks and sexually transmitted infection checks) was undertaken. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the verbatim transcripts.

This research identified there is a lack of motivation to initiate the search for SDTs; consumers are motivated by a desire to control and monitor health concerns and avoid overuse of the health system. The findings showed a preference for social support to go beyond informational support, with a need for interactivity that personalised support in a proactive manner.

SDTs are positively perceived by consumers as part of health services. The motivation to use these tools is complex, and the social support needed is multifaceted and preferably interactive.

This research assists service marketers to better design informational and instrumental support for preventative self-managed healthcare services.

This paper extends knowledge about the motivation and social support required from SDTs in a preventative health service context.

The physically-demanding and repetitive nature of construction work often exposes workers to work-related musculoskeletal injuries. Real-time information about the ergonomic consequences of workers' postures can enhance their ability to control or self-manage their exposures. This study proposes a digital twin framework to improve self-management ergonomic exposures through bi-directional mapping between workers' postures and their corresponding virtual replica.

The viability of the proposed approach was demonstrated by implementing the digital twin framework on a simulated floor-framing task. The proposed framework uses wearable sensors to track the kinematics of workers' body segments and communicates the ergonomic risks via an augmented virtual replica within the worker's field of view. Sequence-to-sequence long short-term memory (LSTM) network is employed to adapt the virtual feedback to workers' performance.

Results show promise for reducing ergonomic risks of the construction workforce through improved awareness. The experimental study demonstrates feasibility of the proposed approach for reducing overexertion of the trunk. Performance of the LSTM network improved when trained with augmented data but at a high computational cost.

Suggested actionable feedback is currently based on actual work postures. The study is experimental and will need to be scaled up prior to field deployment.

This study reveals the potentials of digital twins for personalized posture training and sets precedence for further investigations into opportunities offered by digital twins for improving health and wellbeing of the construction workforce.

Personal Health Record (PHR) systems make possible to integrate data from different sources and circulate them within the illness care and management network. The new arrangements prefigure a redefinition of the relations among healthcare practitioners, patients, and caregivers. The purpose of this paper is to consider the role and the meanings attributed to information when a technical artifact enables new forms of communication within the healthcare management network.

The authors adopted a qualitative research design, conducting a pre-post analysis on a theoretical sample of patients and of a paediatrics department. The authors selected 12 patients (six females and six males) aged between four and 20 years old.

The patients were willing to act as “stewards of their own information” (Halamka et al., 2008), but they interpreted this role in terms of restricting access to their information, rather than facilitating its dissemination. In fact, the PHR was symbolized as an instrument to support personal diabetes management but the patients want to preserve their own competence and independent management on the information regarding their “Personal” diseases.

This work highlights two connotation of “Personal” information. The first is the dimension of the right to the privacy of information when it is believed that it may be used to pass judgement on the patient. The second connotation of “Personal” is the assertion by patients of their competence and autonomy in interpreting the information on the basis of personal knowledge about their diabetes.

The use of modern technology has many challenges and risks. However, by collaborating with schoolchildren, ideas to effectively promote health and learning in school can be identified. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a participatory approach can deepen the understanding of how schoolchildren relate to and use gamification as a tool to promote physical activity and learning.

Inspired by the concept and process of empowerment and child participation, the methodological focus of this study was on consulting schoolchildren. During a two-month period, 18 schoolchildren (10-12 years old) participated in workshops to create game ideas that would motivate them to be physically active and learn in school.

The phenomenological analysis resulted in one main theme, “Playing games for fun to be the best I can be.” This consisted of four themes with two sub-themes each. The findings offer insights on how to increase physical activity and health education opportunities using serious games in school.

The knowledge gained provides gamification concepts and combinations of different technological applications to increase health and learning, as well as motivational aspects suggested by the schoolchildren. The findings are discussed with health promotion and health education in mind.

The emergence of mobile health (mHealth) products has created a capability of monitoring and managing the health of patients with chronic diseases. These mHealth technologies would not be beneficial unless they are adopted and used by their target users. This study identifies key factors affecting the usage of mHealth apps based on user usage data collected from an mHealth app.

Using a dataset collected from an mHealth app named mPower, developed for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), this paper investigated the effects of disease diagnosis, disease progression and mHealth app difficulty level on app usage, while controlling for user information. App usage is measured by five different activity counts of the app.

The results across five measures of mHealth app usage vary slightly. On average, previous professional diagnosis and high user performance scores encourage user participation and engagement, while disease progression hinders app usage.

The findings potentially provide insights into better design and promotion of mHealth products and improve the capability of health management of patients with chronic diseases.

Studies on the mHealth app usage are critical but sparse because large-scale and reliable mHealth app usage data are limited. Unlike earlier works based solely on survey data, this research used a large user usage data collected from an mHealth app to study key factors affecting app usage. The methods presented in this study can serve as a pioneering work for the design and promotion of mHealth technologies.

This editorial brings to an end a branded series of articles on the outputs of research concerned with improving the quality of life of older and disabled people. The growing significance of the subject matter addressed throughout this series is illustrated and discussed. As a consequence of the series, it has been realised that papers on topics that previously would have been considered peripheral to the interests of the readership of JIC are now recognised as significant for good health and well‐being.

A rapid increase in global smartphone ownership and digital health technologies offers the potential for mobile phone applications (apps) to deliver mental health interventions. The purpose of this paper is to bring together evidence reporting on mental health mobile apps to gain an understanding of the quality of current evidence, the positive and adverse effects of apps and the mechanisms underlying such effects.

A systematic search was carried out across six databases, for any systematic reviews or meta-analyses conducted up to 2020. Review quality was assessed using the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews.

Across a total of 24 articles, a variety of clinical outcomes were assessed. Most compelling support was shown for apps targeting anxiety symptoms; some evidence favoured the use of apps for depression symptoms. Less evidence was available for the remaining clinical symptoms such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disorders and substance use. Overall, there was limited evidence pertaining to adverse effects and change mechanisms and a lack of quality reporting across a large proportion of included reviews. The included reviews demonstrate the need for further robust research before apps are recommended clinically.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to the current status of research and reviews investigating mental health mobile apps. Recommendations are made for improved adherence to review guidelines and to ensure risk of bias is minimised.

The advancement of digital technological breakthroughs in the construction industry is dependent on connecting the attributes of the intended consumers to the technologies. Thus, this study aims to look at the relationship between construction app acceptance and the digital qualities of construction professionals (CPs) to determine whether understanding the connection can assist predict construction app user behaviour.

This study’s theoretical approach was derived from the European Union digital competence model, which supports the hypothesis that the traits associated with digital competence enable digitally competent CPs to embrace construction apps. Six hypotheses were developed to investigate the theories, and multiple linear regression analysis was used to predict the acceptance of construction apps based on the CP’s attributes.

The investigation’s findings revealed that the CP’s attributes can explain at least 50% of the proportion of variance in 34 construction apps. The use of a smartphone (Mean Score = 3.30; Factor Loading = 0.609), technological orientation (Mean Score = 3.55; Factor Loading = 0.663), information technology skills (Mean Score = 3.48; Factor Loading = 0.649), information on construction innovation (Mean Score = 3.73; Factor Loading = 0.528) and interest in R&D (Mean Score = 3.48; Factor Loading = 0.531) are the digital characteristics that can essentially forecast the acceptance of construction apps. The data backs up the notion that CPs would gain digital competency before accepting construction apps. This is because a digitally savvy CP will most likely embrace construction apps.

Frameworks for accelerating digital technologies and innovations in the construction industry have been unveiled in this study. The research also gives recommendations for the evaluation, design and implementation of a more attractive construction app. This study also has implications for investigating the impacts of risk aversion, personal connection, social influence, technological curiosity and digital nativity as predictors of construction app uptake.

The findings of this study serve as an index for prioritising digital traits for CPs and characterising a digitally proficient construction professional. The findings provide recommendations for organising, training and supporting construction personnel’ digital competencies. The research is useful for developing and implementing instructional digital training programmes.

This study is unusual in that it provides clear insights on construction apps as well as variables for building great user-experience apps for CPs, which are both limited in the literature.