JMIR Research Protocols

Emotional disorders—primarily anxiety and unipolar depressive disorders—are highly prevalent, disabling, and frequently comorbid. Disorder‑specific cognitive behavioral therapy (DS‑CBT) is considered a gold standard treatment, yet it can be inefficient in the context of high comorbidity and service constraints. Transdiagnostic psychotherapies that target shared maintaining mechanisms (eg, emotion dysregulation and neuroticism) have been developed, including the Unified Protocol, transdiagnostic behavior therapy, emotion regulation therapy, and various transdiagnostic internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy protocols. Recent meta-analyses suggest that transdiagnostic interventions are effective or likely effective, but a comprehensive comparative evaluation across different transdiagnostic protocols, DS‑CBT, other evidence‑based psychotherapies, and control conditions is lacking.

Upper limb impairment is a common consequence of stroke, affecting independence and quality of life. Virtual reality (VR) interventions, including serious games designed for therapeutic purposes and commercial games developed primarily for entertainment, have been increasingly used for poststroke upper limb rehabilitation. Evidence comparing the effectiveness of these game types on functional outcomes remains unclear.

Alveolar ridge resorption following tooth extraction can compromise subsequent implant placement. Socket preservation techniques aim to minimize dimensional changes and promote favorable bone healing. Chitosan nanoparticles combined with titanium-prepared platelet-rich fibrin represent a biologically active approach to ridge preservation.

Reproducible study findings are those that are shown to be identical or nearly identical when an original study is repeated using similar methods. Findings from many randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in cardiovascular surgery have not been reproduced or are small, statistically fragile, and potentially influenced by funding source. They also demonstrate variable end point selection and protocol adherence, all of which may influence reproducibility of their reported results.

Depression in adolescents is a growing public health concern, with 3.5 million youth in the United States experiencing a depressive episode each year. When symptoms emerge in early adolescence, they can have lasting psychological, physical, and cognitive consequences, highlighting the urgent need for proactive intervention. Insufficient sleep—characterized by short duration, irregular timing, and poor quality—is bidirectionally linked to depression and associated with impaired cognitive performance.

Regular and sustained handwashing is a key preventive measure for reducing the transmission of infectious diseases among school-aged children. Virtual reality (VR) interventions have demonstrated potential to facilitate behavioral change by creating immersive environments in which behavioral and environmental variables can be systematically manipulated. Compared with conventional verbal or video-based instruction, VR-based handwashing education may provide students with more interactive and experiential learning opportunities, and may improve cleaning of commonly missed areas, such as the wrists. However, evidence on school-based VR interventions for handwashing education in Hong Kong remains limited.

Tobacco use remains the leading modifiable risk factor for causing cancer worldwide, particularly among people with HIV. In Laos, 61%‐80% of male people with HIV and 3%‐10% of female people with HIV smoke cigarettes. They currently have no theoretically and empirically based smoking cessation support. Our team developed a scalable and affordable mHealth (mobile health)–based automated treatment program to support Lao and Cambodian smokers to quit smoking. We also pioneered the Ask-Advise-Connect approach to identify patients who smoke and to connect them to treatment.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems based on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) technologies are increasingly integrated into chronic disease management and telemedicine pathways. Despite their widespread adoption, cybersecurity performance, system resilience, and user behavior in real-world clinical environments remain underexplored. Existing evidence is fragmented, often limited to laboratory simulations or vendor-driven assessments, leaving a critical gap in understanding how cybersecurity risks across the full life cycle of RPM systems deployed in health care settings.

Noise-induced hearing loss is permanent yet preventable. Agricultural workers routinely experience hazardous noise exposure, and hearing protection use remains low. Existing interventions emphasize individual knowledge and intentions and have rarely been tested using objective outcome measures. This protocol describes the adaptation and pilot evaluation of an individual-level component of a multilevel noise-induced hearing loss prevention intervention for farmworkers. This pilot focuses on refining and testing a brief digitally delivered novella.

The need for gender-affirming care (GAC) for young people has increased rapidly worldwide. GAC includes social, psychological, and medical interventions aimed at alleviating gender-related distress. Given that many outcomes of GAC relate to how young people function and feel, a rigorously developed patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) is needed. To address this need, GENDER-Q Youth was developed with extensive input from youth with lived experience. Concept elicitation interviews were performed with 47 youth from Canada and the United States. A conceptual framework and draft PROM were developed and refined with feedback from 33 experts and 17 youth, and were pilot tested with 406 older youth. The field test version of GENDER-Q Youth includes 16 independently functioning scales (248 items) that measure health-related quality of life, gender practices, voice, and experience of care.

Accurate measurement of lifestyle factors is central to understanding how daily behaviors act as risk factors or protective buffers to noncommunicable diseases. While wearable devices enable passive monitoring of physical activity or sleep, nutritional intake still depends on active participant input, such as manual dietary logs or image-based recordings. Adherence to such logging tasks often declines rapidly, impacting data completeness and clinical utility. Theory-based reminders drawing on loss-framing or logging consistency feedback (ie, tracking streaks) can improve adherence to lifestyle data collection, but the effects of these strategies on repeated dietary logging remain unclear.

Ambient voice technology (AVT) uses conversational AI to record and organize clinical consultations in real time. It is being adopted quickly across the National Health Service (NHS). However, evidence about its effects on productivity, costs, or staff experience across different health care settings is limited. Phase 1 of this research program developed a taxonomy, logic model, and outcome framework for evaluating AVT. Phase 2 will carry out a multisite, mixed methods evaluation of AVT in 4 NHS trusts. These include mental health outpatient services, acute hospital outpatient clinics, and accident and emergency departments.