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Digitalization crosses all areas of life (Hess et al. 2014). Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) opens new potentials for further developments and improvements, with virtual coaching being a prime example. Virtual coaches (VCs) aim to optimize the user’s life by transforming cognition, affection, and behavior towards a stated goal. Since they emerged from the health and sports domain, a typical example are VCs in the form of digital avatars, which instruct physical exercises, shape health-related knowledge and provide motivational support to achieve the user’s goals (e.g., weight loss) (Ding et al. 2010; Tropea et al. 2019). Nonetheless, the application areas of VCs are versatile and exploring the potential areas (e.g., healthcare, work, finance, leisure, and environment) constitutes an essential topic of future research and development. According to Gartner’s hype cycle for human capital management technology, VCs are still in their infancy but are considered innovation triggers for the following years (Gartner, Inc. 2021). Specifically, VCs can be a replacement or complement for traditional human-to-human coaching scenarios and promise broad access to personalized coaching services independent of place and time (Graßmann and Schermuly 2021). As a result, VCs may contribute to solving challenges posed by an aging society and skilled labor shortage (European Commission 2016; Edwards and Cheok 2018). Last but not least, the recent COVID-19 pandemic additionally showcased the need for VCs as an alternative to traditional face-to-face interventions. Against this background and driven by the potential and promises of VCs, research has recently engaged in developing and understanding VC applications (Tropea et al. 2019; Lete et al. 2020; Graßmann and Schermuly 2021). To introduce the concept in information systems (IS) research and provide a basis for researchers and practitioners alike, this catchword aims at providing a holistic view on VCs. The structure of this paper is as follows. Section2 elaborates a definition, delimits VCs from related system classes, and proposes a research framework. Section 3 aggregates existing research into the framework and concludes with an outlook on future IS research perspectives.

Health care delivery is undergoing a rapid change from traditional processes toward the use of digital health interventions and personalized medicine. This movement has been accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis as a response to the need to guarantee access to health care services while reducing the risk of contagion. Digital health scale-up is now also vital to achieve population-wide impact: it will only accomplish sustainable effects if and when deployed into regular health care delivery services. The question of how sustainable digital health scale-up can be successfully achieved has, however, not yet been sufficiently resolved. This paper identifies and discusses enablers and barriers for scaling up digital health innovations. The results discussed in this paper were gathered by scientists and representatives of public bodies as well as patient organizations at an international workshop on scaling up digital health innovations. Results are explored in the context of prior research and implications for future work in achieving large-scale implementations that will benefit the population as a whole., Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24 (3), ISSN:1438-8871