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Public engagement in health and biomedical research is being influenced by the paradigm of citizen science. However, conventional health and biomedical research relies on sophisticated research data management tools and methods. Considering these, what contribution can citizen science make in this field of research? How can it follow research protocols and produce reliable results?

The opioid epidemic is a modern public health emergency. Common interventions to alleviate the opioid epidemic aim to discourage excessive prescription of opioids. However, these methods often take place over large municipal areas (state-level) and may fail to address the diversity that exists within each opioid case (individual-level). An intervention to combat the opioid epidemic that takes place at the individual-level would be preferable.

We investigated user requirements for a smartphone application to coordinate layperson administration of naloxone during an opioid overdose.

The management of pediatric pain typically consists of individualized treatment plans and interventions that have not been systematically evaluated. There is an emerging need to create systems that can support the translation of clinical discoveries, facilitate the assessment of current interventions, and improve the collection of patient-centered data beyond routine clinical information. We present the development of the pediatric pain data repository, a custom-built system developed at Boston Children's Hospital [...]

To adapt and evaluate a deep learning language model for answering why-questions based on patient-specific clinical text.

The active involvement of citizen scientists in setting research agendas, partnering with academic investigators to conduct research, analyzing and disseminating results, and implementing learnings from research can improve both processes and outcomes. Adopting a citizen science approach to the practice of precision medicine in clinical care and research will require healthcare providers, researchers, and institutions to address a number of technical, organizational, and citizen scientist collaboration issues. Some changes can [...]

There has been substantial growth in eHealth over the past decade, driven by expectations of improved healthcare system performance. Despite substantial eHealth investment, little is known about the monitoring and evaluation strategies for gauging progress in eHealth availability and use. This scoping review aims to map the existing literature and depict the predominant approaches and methodological recommendations to national and regional monitoring and evaluation of eHealth availability and use, to [...]

Opioid-based analgesia is routinely used in clinical practice for the management of pain and alleviation of suffering at the end of life. It is well-known that opioid-based medications can be highly addictive, promoting not only abuse but also life-threatening overdoses. The scope of opioid-related adverse events (AEs) beyond these well-known effects remains poorly described. This exploratory analysis investigates potential AEs from drug-drug interactions between opioid and nonopioid medications (ODIs).

The growing prevalence of chronic conditions requiring changes in lifestyle and at-home self-management has increased interest in and need for supplementing clinic visits with data generated by patients outside the clinic. Patient-generated health data (PGHD) support the ability to diagnose and manage chronic conditions, to improve health outcomes, and have the potential to facilitate more "connected health" between patients and their care teams; however, health systems have been slow to [...]