The health care landscape is transforming rapidly, driven by technological innovation and the pressing need for more efficient, accessible and patient-centric health care solutions.
Yet, the health IT industry grapples with the “simplicity bias” inherited from other IT-intensive industries such as banking and insurance. Health professionals frequently voice concerns about the usability of electronic health records, the lack of semantic interoperability, and the increased workload and information loss due to excessive structuration and categorization. The hidden costs of digitalization have been massively underestimated.
Industry-driven digital health innovations offer a beacon of hope, developing or using solutions that can be commercialized or implemented at scale across the health care sector. These focus on large-scale service innovations or targeted, smaller-scale operational improvements that increase efficiency, quality, and user adoption. Such initiatives often involve collaborations across sectors, industry, academic, private and public health care. For example, the Apple Heart Study, a collaboration between Apple, Stanford Medicine, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, showcased the potential of wearables in clinical practice, and the Mayo Clinic’s partnership with Google Cloud to integrate generative AI to search tools, making it easier for clinicians to access relevant medical notes, research papers, or clinical guidelines, and for patients to search the information they need.
Documenting and analyzing the diverse experiences and lessons learned from industry-driven digital health innovation is critical to understanding their impact on health systems and outcomes. To this end, JMIR Medical Informatics invites submissions to a new section dedicated to showcasing cutting-edge research and insights in this field.
Through a collection of industry-driven digital health implementation reports, this new section aims to:
Highlight Best Practices:
- Document implementations that have successfully integrated digital health technologies, improving patient care and operational efficiency.
- Share innovative approaches and strategies that can be replicated in different settings.
Identify Challenges and Solutions:
- Discuss obstacles encountered during the implementation, such as technological, regulatory, and cultural barriers.
- Present solutions and adaptations made to overcome these challenges, providing a valuable learning resource for future implementations.
Foster Knowledge Sharing:
- Facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences among health care providers, industry leaders, researchers, and policymakers globally.
- Empower decision-makers with real-world data and case studies to inform future implementations and policies.
Create a Pool of Actionable Implementation Reports:
- Develop a collection of industry-driven implementation reports that adhere to the iCHECK-DH reporting guidelines [1], and enable meta-analysis and synthesis of data to develop best practices, inform policy development, and guide strategic planning.
By dedicating a special issue to industry-driven implementation reports that follow the iCHECK-DH reporting guidelines, JMIR Medical Informatics will provide an important platform for sharing standardized, high-quality implementation knowledge.
Authorship Expectations:
We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors, including industry partners (eg, established companies, start-ups), academic researchers, and multi-sector collaborative teams. Papers co-authored by both industry and academic partners are particularly welcome, as they provide a balanced perspective that bridges research and practice. Authors may also submit articles that use commercial solutions (eg, integrating patient decision aids into the Epic electronic health record [1]) or solutions that are scalable and have potential for commercialization within the health care industry.
How to Submit:
Please submit to JMIR Medical Informatics by selecting “Industry-Driven Implementation Report” in the “Section” drop-down list. Consult our instructions for authors for more information on how to submit a manuscript. Authors submitting an Implementation Report are required to adhere to the i-CHECK-DH reporting guideline for digital health implementations [2], in accordance with JMIR Publications policy [3].
Submission deadline: Open call for submissions
Submission Guidelines:
All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer-review process, and accepted articles will be published as part of the “Industry-Driven Implementation Report” section. Standard APF applies.
Editors:
Associate Editor: Caroline Perrin Franck, PhD, Geneva Digital Health Hub (gdhub), University of Geneva, Switzerland
Editor-in-Chief: Christian Lovis, MD, MPH, FACMI, Division of Medical Information Sciences, University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland
References:
- Scalia P, Ahmad F, Schubbe D, et al. Integrating Option Grid Patient Decision Aids in the Epic Electronic Health Record: Case Study at 5 Health Systems. J Med Internet Res 2021;23(5):e22766. [doi: 10.2196/22766] [PMID: 33938806]
- Perrin Franck C, Babington-Ashaye A, Dietrich D, et al. iCHECK-DH: Guidelines and Checklist for the Reporting on Digital Health Implementations. J Med Internet Res 2023;25:e46694. [doi: 10.2196/46694] [PMID: 37163336]
- What reporting guidelines should I follow for my article? JMIR Publications. [url: https://support.jmir.org/hc/en-us/articles/115001575267] [accessed 2024-08-23]