JMIR Publications recently renewed JMIR’s unlimited OA publishing agreement with ZB MED. Thanks to this partnership, researchers across Germany can continue publishing their work open-access in JMIR journals without paying any APC fees. This multi-year extension is a big win for making high-impact digital health research freely available to clinicians, health systems, policymakers, and readers around the world.
To mark the occasion, I want to highlight three open-access articles from the past year. My favourite genre of research in JMIR journals is work that looks beyond whether tech simply "works" to explore whether it actually serves people in a fair, ethical, and practical way. Here’s a quick look at innovation in health tech through three distinct lenses: systemic ethics, clinician practice, and patient experience.
AI scribes use ambient listening to capture doctor-patient conversations and automatically write clinical visit notes, helping to relieve heavy documentation burdens. However, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover researchers Frank Ursin and Sabine Salloch point out that these tools do far more than transcribe speech, they actively select and structure what gets recorded in a patient's medical file.
Relying too heavily on automated notes brings real risks, such as clinicians losing critical note-taking skills or AI filtering out important personal details from a patient's story. Speech recognition tools can also struggle with nonstandard accents or speech impairments, potentially introducing bias into the medical record. To keep digital scribes fair and effective long-term, the authors argue that AI tools must be built as interactive assistants that require active doctor engagement and review, rather than acting as automatic replacements.
Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen gathered survey responses from 5,930 physicians and psychotherapists across Germany to evaluate post-pandemic attitudes towards video consultations.
The study by Kleinschmidt et al. revealed a notable gap between interest and daily practice: while nearly 80% of providers expressed interest in offering video visits, only about 40% were actually using them at least once a month. Psychotherapists used video visits most frequently, showing over 8 times higher odds of monthly usage compared to primary care doctors. Providers felt virtual visits worked best for conversation-based or routine administrative tasks, such as discussing test results (75%), writing prescriptions (66%), or issuing sick notes (65%), but were far less suitable for hands-on physical examinations.
Smart home emergency response systems use sensors to automatically detect crises like falls or fires and alert emergency services without requiring the user to manually press an alarm button. A study by Pantförder et al at Witten/Herdecke University and Fraunhofer ISST examined what influences whether households are willing to adopt this technology.
The researchers found that perceived accessibility, specifically how easy a system is to obtain, set up, and fit into daily routines, was the single biggest factor encouraging adoption. Conversely, skepticism surrounding false alarms, technical complexity, and data privacy created the largest hesitation. To build public trust and ensure these safety tools work fairly for patients, the study concluded that automated emergency tech must be simple to install and give users clear controls to handle false alarms.
Together, these three studies re-enforce the idea that successful digital health tools must balance technical capability with ethical safeguards, clinical workflows, and user trust. Thanks to the ZB MED agreement, this important research from German institutions remains freely accessible worldwide, paving the way for a more thoughtful, equitable future in healthcare technology.
For anyone interested in learning more about JMIR’s agreement with ZB MED, I’m happy to answer any questions, michael.byer@jmir.org.
Original Articles:
Ursin F, Salloch S. The Ethics of AI Scribes as Epistemic Agents
JMIR Med Inform 2026;14:e88235
URL: https://medinform.jmir.org/2026/1/e88235
DOI: 10.2196/88235
Kleinschmidt L, Wasem J, Blase N, Nauendorf B, Malsch J, Brittner M, Brandenburg P, Aeustergerling A, Hüer T. Attitudes Toward Video Consultations From the Perspective of Physicians and Psychotherapists in German Outpatient Care After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Survey Study
J Med Internet Res 2026;28:e73757
URL: https://www.jmir.org/2026/1/e73757
DOI: 10.2196/73757
Pantförder M, Krüger O, Rietz A, Dzieia C, Meister S. User Acceptance of Smart Home Emergency Response Systems: Mixed Methods Study
JMIR Hum Factors 2026;13:e93003
URL: https://humanfactors.jmir.org/2026/1/e93003
DOI: 10.2196/93003