June is Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month, a dedicated time to focus on our cognitive well-being. As part of our special coverage for this awareness month, we are exploring how smart home environments are redefining safety for older adults aging in place. Highlighting recent research published in JMIR Aging, this post examines how shifting from intrusive surveillance to passive, AI-powered monitoring can create an invisible safety net—preserving both patient independence and family peace of mind.

JMIR Publications, a leading publisher of academic journals dedicated to digital health and open science, today announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for a three-year partnership with MetaROR (MetaResearch Open Review). The collaboration will focus on integrating MetaROR’s publish-review-curate platform with JMIR’s innovative publishing ecosystem—specifically its JMIRx overlay journal series, including JMIRx Med and JMIRx Bio.

Formative evaluation is a vital pillar of implementation science, used to identify early barriers to adoption before deploying new health technologies. Traditionally, this process relies on gathering stakeholders’ expectations through preuse questionnaires. While this works well for standard screen-based apps, it hits a bottleneck when applied to immersive systems like Extended Reality (XR).

Adolescence is a critical window for building lifelong health habits, yet young people face an evidence gap when it comes to high quality, scientifically backed digital wellness tools. A staggering 98% of available stress management apps lack peer reviewed research supporting their design.

The dust has settled at the Moscone Center and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) 2026 Annual Meeting is officially in the books! It was an incredible week in San Francisco. While I spent my days talking about open access journals at our booth and my evenings soaking up the surprisingly warm San Francisco weather after the exhibit floor closed, the incredible energy surrounding the future of digital mental health was obvious the entire week.

Telemedicine is a cornerstone of modern digital health strategies, promising to bridge geographic gaps and bring clinical care directly to patients. However, as virtual consultations become routine, a critical question emerges: are patients around the world sufficiently protected by legal and ethical infrastructure?

As wearable technology becomes a staple in both fitness and clinical monitoring, the demand for high-accuracy heart rate (HR) tracking continues to grow. While most smartwatches perform well at rest, the real challenge lies in maximal-intensity exercise, where heavy movement and physiological stress can interfere with optical sensors.

Real world data (RWD) is increasingly a key engine behind modern drug discovery and clinical decision making. However, anyone who has worked with electronic health records (EHRs) knows that this engine often relies on data that are fragmented and inconsistent. Laboratory results, which are the backbone of oncology care, are frequently plagued by inaccurate codes and missing units.

For over 25 years, JMIR Publications has operated on a simple premise: health research should be immediately and freely accessible to all. However, recent policy changes from major funders like Cancer Research UK (CRUK) now threaten to dismantle the very "Full Open Access" model that made this possible. By cutting all APC support, these policies risk stifling independent, scholar-led publishers while leaving the massive revenue streams of legacy publishers untouched. Below, we share our response to CRUK and propose five alternatives that reform the system without sacrificing the progress of the last two decades.

Are you heading to MIE 2026 in Genova? Don’t miss the chance to connect with Tiffany Leung, Scientific Editorial Director; Amy Mavragani, Scientific Editor; and Stefano Brini, Scientific Editor. They will be sharing their expertise across panels and tutorials.