{"title":"Advancing perioperative care with digital applications and wearables","authors":"Ben Li, Arjun Mahajan, Dylan Powell","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01620-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01620-3","url":null,"abstract":"The rapid increase in real-time health information collected from wearable devices has allowed digital biomarkers to emerge as a promising tool to support perioperative care, including surgical prehabilitation, intra-operative guidance, and post-operative monitoring. Important challenges include the accuracy of generated information, data security risks, and slow adoption of new technologies. Active stakeholder engagement and following existing digital biomarker development/implementation frameworks may support using this technology to improve surgical outcomes.","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"91 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Roberto Vega, Masood Dehghan, Arun Nagdev, Brian Buchanan, Jeevesh Kapur, Jacob L. Jaremko, Dornoosh Zonoobi
{"title":"Overcoming barriers in the use of artificial intelligence in point of care ultrasound","authors":"Roberto Vega, Masood Dehghan, Arun Nagdev, Brian Buchanan, Jeevesh Kapur, Jacob L. Jaremko, Dornoosh Zonoobi","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01633-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01633-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Point-of-care ultrasound is a portable, low-cost imaging technology focused on answering specific clinical questions in real time. Artificial intelligence amplifies its capabilities by aiding clinicians in the acquisition and interpretation of the images; however, there are growing concerns on its effectiveness and trustworthiness. Here, we address key issues such as population bias, explainability and training of artificial intelligence in this field and propose approaches to ensure clinical effectiveness.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Micaela Elisa Consens, Ben Li, Anna R. Poetsch, Stephen Gilbert
{"title":"Genomic language models could transform medicine but not yet","authors":"Micaela Elisa Consens, Ben Li, Anna R. Poetsch, Stephen Gilbert","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01603-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01603-4","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, a genomic language model (gLM) with 40 billion parameters known as Evo2 has reached the same scale as the most powerful text large language models (LLMs). gLMs have been emerging as powerful tools to decode DNA sequences over the last five years. This article examines the emergence of gLMs and highlights Evo2 as a milestone in genomic language modeling, assessing both the scientific promise of gLMs and the practical challenges facing their implementation in medicine.","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143849606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yunxi Zhang, Lincy S. Lal, Saurabh Chandra, John Michael Swint
{"title":"Primary care telehealth in a dynamic healthcare environment from digital divide to healthcare outcomes","authors":"Yunxi Zhang, Lincy S. Lal, Saurabh Chandra, John Michael Swint","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01599-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01599-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>With expanded telehealth availability in primary care, its impact on quality of care and associated costs remains debated. Analyzing 199,829 Medicare beneficiaries in Mississippi (2019–2021), we found telehealth utilization associated with significant sociodemographic disparities, reduced inpatient admissions, and lower 30-day readmissions. By accounting for primary care utilization, our findings suggest that the higher absolute costs observed among telehealth users may reflect underlying healthcare needs rather than telehealth utilization.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143841200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jiyeong Kim, Michael L. Chen, Shawheen J. Rezaei, Tina Hernandez-Boussard, Jonathan H. Chen, Fatima Rodriguez, Summer S. Han, Rayhan A. Lal, Sun H. Kim, Chrysoula Dosiou, Susan M. Seav, Tugce Akcan, Carolyn I. Rodriguez, Steven M. Asch, Eleni Linos
{"title":"Artificial intelligence tools in supporting healthcare professionals for tailored patient care","authors":"Jiyeong Kim, Michael L. Chen, Shawheen J. Rezaei, Tina Hernandez-Boussard, Jonathan H. Chen, Fatima Rodriguez, Summer S. Han, Rayhan A. Lal, Sun H. Kim, Chrysoula Dosiou, Susan M. Seav, Tugce Akcan, Carolyn I. Rodriguez, Steven M. Asch, Eleni Linos","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01604-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01604-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support clinicians in providing patient-centered care can contribute to patient empowerment and care efficiency. We aimed to draft potential AI tools for tailored patient support corresponding to patients’ needs and assess clinicians’ perceptions about the usefulness of those AI tools. To define patients’ issues, we analyzed 528,199 patient messages of 11,123 patients with diabetes by harnessing natural language processing and AI. Applying multiple prompt-engineering techniques, we drafted a series of AI tools, and five endocrinologists evaluated them for perceived usefulness and risk. Patient education and administrative support for timely and streamlined interaction were perceived as highly useful, yet deeper integration of AI tools into patient data was perceived as risky. This study proposes assorted AI applications as clinical assistance tailored to patients’ needs substantiated by clinicians’ evaluations. Findings could offer essential ramifications for developing potential AI tools for precision patient care for diabetes and beyond.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143841196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daniel C. Baumgart, C. Hing Cheng, Tian X. Du, Michael D. Parkes, Daniel C. Sadowski, Eytan Wine, Frank Hoentjen, Brendan P. Halloran, Aldo Montano-Loza, Sergio Zepeda-Gomez, Karen Wong, Farhad Peerani, Randolph Goebel, J. Ross Mitchell
{"title":"Network analysis of extraintestinal manifestations and associated autoimmune disorders in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis","authors":"Daniel C. Baumgart, C. Hing Cheng, Tian X. Du, Michael D. Parkes, Daniel C. Sadowski, Eytan Wine, Frank Hoentjen, Brendan P. Halloran, Aldo Montano-Loza, Sergio Zepeda-Gomez, Karen Wong, Farhad Peerani, Randolph Goebel, J. Ross Mitchell","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01504-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01504-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We detect and interactively visualize occurrence, frequency, sequence, and clustering of extraintestinal manifestations (EIM) and associated immune disorders (AID) in 30,334 inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients (Crohn’s disease (CD) <i>n</i> = 15924, ulcerative colitis (UC) <i>n</i> = 11718, IBD unclassified, IBD-U <i>n</i> = 2692, 52% female, median age 40 years (IQR: 25)) with artificial intelligence (AI). 57% (CD > UC 60% vs. 54%, <i>p</i> < 0.00001) had one or more EIM and/or AID. Mental, musculoskeletal and genitourinary disorders were most frequently associated with IBD: 18% (CD vs. UC 19% vs. 16%, <i>p</i> < 0.00001), 17% (CD vs. UC 20% vs. 15%, <i>p</i> < 0.00001) and 11% (CD vs. UC 13% vs. 9%, <i>p</i> < 0.00001), respectively. AI detected 4 vs. 5 vs. 5 distinct EIM/AID communities with 420 vs. 396 vs. 467 nodes and 11,492 vs. 9116 vs. 16,807 edges (links) in CD vs. UC vs. IBD, respectively. Our newly developed interactive free web app shows previously unknown communities, relationships, and temporal patterns—the diseasome and interactome.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143836679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Khang Nguyen, Dinh Nguyen, Sinjin Lee, Jin Chang, Yvonne Bach, Kien La, Ferdinand Justus, Tianyuan Shao, Caleb Wang, Mason Kellogg, Raquel Taylor, Alan Evans
{"title":"Virtual urgent care in an integrated value based healthcare system","authors":"Khang Nguyen, Dinh Nguyen, Sinjin Lee, Jin Chang, Yvonne Bach, Kien La, Ferdinand Justus, Tianyuan Shao, Caleb Wang, Mason Kellogg, Raquel Taylor, Alan Evans","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01590-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01590-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Virtual urgent care (VUC) is not well understood when delivered through an integrated value-based healthcare system. The Southern California Permanente Medical Group operates <i>Get Care Now</i> (GCN), a VUC program complementing its urgent care clinics (UCC). Quality and patient experience dimensions are included in this study, comparing GCN and UCC patients. Females and Hispanics/Latinos were predominant in both groups and proportions of patients with chronic conditions were nearly identical within the leading 30–49 age band. Wait times for GCN were 21.19 min lower than for UCC, and positive patient survey results align with GCN’s average Net Promoter Score of 87. 3-day return rates to the ED (2.53% GCN vs. 3.26% UCC) and to UCC (5.44% GCN vs. 2.42% UCC) were comparable between GCN and UCC utilizers. Findings demonstrate that 24/7 VUC sustainably supports meeting patient demand for urgent care services in an integrated value-based system.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"183 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143827693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An umbrella review of efficacy of digital health interventions for workers","authors":"Masahiro Iwakura, Chihiro Ozeki, Songee Jung, Teiichiro Yamazaki, Takako Miki, Michiko Nohara, Kyoko Nomura","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01578-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01578-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Efficacy of digital health (d-Health) interventions on workers’ physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, and physiological outcomes remains unclear. This umbrella review searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar up to October 25, 2024. We identified 24 systematic reviews (SRs) and selected 130 individual studies from these SRs for analysis. The AMSTAR 2 tool rated the quality of most SRs as critically low. Narrative syntheses suggested that d-Health interventions could potentially improve all outcomes compared with no intervention. However, whether d-Health interventions outperform non-d-Health interventions remains uncertain. Meta-analyses showed a significantly small effect of d-Health interventions on step counts, sedentary/sitting time, and weight compared with no intervention, while d-Health interventions slightly improved only moderate-to-vigorous PA compared with non-d-Health interventions. Subgroup analyses identified potential sources of heterogeneity (e.g., risk of bias, control conditions), which may vary between outcomes. Further high-quality studies are needed to evaluate the efficacy of d-Health interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143827655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rashmie Abeysinghe, Shiqiang Tao, Samden D. Lhatoo, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Licong Cui
{"title":"Leveraging pretrained language models for seizure frequency extraction from epilepsy evaluation reports","authors":"Rashmie Abeysinghe, Shiqiang Tao, Samden D. Lhatoo, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Licong Cui","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01592-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01592-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Seizure frequency is essential for evaluating epilepsy treatment, ensuring patient safety, and reducing risk for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy. As this information is often described in clinical narratives, this study presents an approach to extracting structured seizure frequency details from such unstructured text. We investigated two tasks: (1) extracting phrases describing seizure frequency, and (2) extracting seizure frequency attributes. For both tasks, we fine-tuned three BERT-based models (bert-large-cased, biobert-large-cased, and Bio_ClinicalBERT), as well as three generative large language models (GPT-4, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and Llama-2-70b-hf). The final structured output integrated the results from both tasks. GPT-4 attained the best performance across all tasks with precision, recall, and F1-score of 86.61%, 85.04%, and 85.79% respectively for frequency phrase extraction; 90.23%, 93.51%, and 91.84% for seizure frequency attribute extraction; and 86.64%, 85.06%, and 85.82% for the final structured output. These findings highlight the potential of fine-tuned generative models in extractive tasks from limited text strings.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143827692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fine-grained forecasting of COVID-19 trends at the county level in the United States","authors":"Tzu-Hsi Song, Leonardo Clemente, Xiang Pan, Junbong Jang, Mauricio Santillana, Kwonmoo Lee","doi":"10.1038/s41746-025-01606-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01606-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a devastating global impact, profoundly affecting daily life, healthcare systems, and public health infrastructure. Despite the availability of treatments and vaccines, hospitalizations and deaths continue. Real-time surveillance of infection trends supports resource allocation and mitigation strategies, but reliable forecasting remains a challenge. While deep learning has advanced time-series forecasting, its effectiveness relies on large datasets, a significant obstacle given the pandemic’s evolving nature. Most models use national or state-level data, limiting both dataset size and the granularity of insights. To address this, we propose the Fine-Grained Infection Forecast Network (FIGI-Net), a stacked bidirectional LSTM structure designed to leverage county-level data to produce daily forecasts up to two weeks in advance. FIGI-Net outperforms existing models, accurately predicting sudden changes such as new outbreaks or peaks, a capability many state-of-the-art models lack. This approach could enhance public health responses and outbreak preparedness.</p>","PeriodicalId":19349,"journal":{"name":"NPJ Digital Medicine","volume":"107 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":15.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143819259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}