Digital and Remote Interventions for Musculoskeletal Aging

Musculoskeletal aging—characterized by progressive declines in muscle mass and strength, mobility, balance, and bone health—drives frailty, falls, loss of independence, and rising healthcare utilization worldwide. At the same time, care pathways for older adults are increasingly challenged by limited access to specialist services, geographic barriers, and the need for scalable prevention and rehabilitation models. Digital and remote interventions—including tele-rehabilitation, mobile health applications, wearable sensors, and home-based monitoring—offer practical ways to extend evidence-based musculoskeletal care beyond the clinic, support long-term adherence, and enable earlier identification of functional decline.

This Research Topic focuses on the development, evaluation, and implementation of digital health approaches targeting musculoskeletal aging across the prevention-to-rehabilitation continuum. We welcome work addressing sarcopenia, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, frailty, falls risk, chronic pain, and post-acute recovery, including interventions that combine exercise prescription, behavior change strategies, coaching, and remote clinical oversight. Particular interest lies in studies that assess clinical effectiveness and safety, but also those that examine feasibility, usability, acceptability, equity of access, and real-world integration into healthcare systems. Contributions may include randomized trials, pragmatic and hybrid effectiveness–implementation studies, validation of digital biomarkers, and methods for remote functional assessments (e.g., strength, gait, balance, physical activity, and patient-reported outcomes).

Key mechanistic and methodological questions are central to this collection: which components of digital interventions drive meaningful changes in function and quality of life; how remote monitoring can personalize progression and reduce adverse events; and how to ensure robust measurement with wearable and smartphone-derived data in older populations. We also encourage research on data standards, interoperability, privacy, and ethical governance, as well as approaches that address health literacy, multimorbidity, and digital exclusion. By bringing together clinicians, engineers, behavioral scientists, and implementation researchers, this Research Topic aims to clarify what works, for whom, and under what conditions—accelerating the translation of digital and remote solutions into sustainable, equitable musculoskeletal aging care.

Article types and fees

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

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... 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
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Tele-rehabilitation, Wearable sensor monitoring, Sarcopenia prevention, Digital biomarkers, Falls risk reduction

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.