Digital Medicine for High-Risk Environments: Human Performance & Emergency Response

Digital medicine is rapidly evolving beyond conventional clinical settings into high-risk and operational environments where human performance, safety, and resilience are mission-critical. Such environments—including disaster zones, search and rescue operations, military and emergency training contexts, spaceflight and space analog habitats, and nuclear emergency scenarios—pose constraints that challenge traditional digital health approaches. Limited connectivity, environmental stressors, isolation, time-critical decision-making, and scarce medical resources require digital medicine systems that are robust, adaptive, and operationally validated.

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial systems, wearable sensors, and neurophysiological monitoring have led to novel approaches for supporting human health and performance in such extreme contexts. However, a significant gap remains between technological innovation and the integration of these tools into seamless, validated systems aligned with the complex needs of end-users facing operational pressure.

Despite growing interest, the field remains fragmented. Many studies address isolated technologies rather than integrated systems, and real-world validation in operational contexts is still limited. Organizational, translational, and implementation challenges further hinder the transition from experimental prototypes to sustained deployment. There is a clear need for a multidisciplinary research platform that brings together technological, human-centered, and operational perspectives on digital medicine in high-risk environments.

This Research Topic aims to unify researchers working on digital medicine solutions designed for high-risk and operational environments. The goal is to advance scientific understanding of how digital technologies can support human health, performance, and decision-making under conditions of stress, isolation, and operational complexity. Contributions are encouraged that examine not only technological innovation, but also system integration, human-centered design, and operational validation.

The Research Topic aims to advance research from system design and proof-of-concept validation to field-ready, scalable digital medicine solutions. Contributions may address applications in emergency response, search and rescue, space analogs, military and high-stress training, nuclear emergency preparedness, and the integration of ambient assisted living with operational health systems. The Research Topic also welcomes methodological and translational work on technology readiness, innovation management, governance, and ethics, fostering interdisciplinary research that strengthens the scientific and operational foundations of digital medicine. We encourage submissions only where the operational context is clearly specified and demonstrably high-risk or extreme, and where the digital medicine approach is designed and/or validated for those conditions.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions that address specific research questions related to the design, validation, and deployment of digital medicine in high-risk and operational environments. Suitable themes include, but are not limited to:

• Integrated digital medicine systems for search and rescue and emergency response
• Human Performance and Behavior in Isolated and Extreme Environments
• Human–machine interaction and human-in-the-loop systems in operational environments
• Neuro-Digital Monitoring and Nonverbal Behavior in High-Stress Training
• Digital countermeasures for physical and cognitive deconditioning in extreme environments
• Digital Medicine for Nuclear Emergency Preparedness and Response
• Technology readiness, validation, and translational pathways for operational digital health
• Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Integrated with Operational Digital Medicine

The Research Topic welcomes original research articles, systematic reviews, methodological contributions, technical system architectures, simulation-based studies, and operational or pilot validation studies. Perspective articles are welcome when grounded in strong empirical or methodological insight. Purely conceptual or opinion-based submissions without a clear link to operational digital medicine are discouraged.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Digital Medicine, Enabling Technologies, Human Factors, Artificial Intelligence, Operational Environments, Extreme and Isolated Environments, Decision Support Systems

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.