Medical researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, conducted a systematic meta-review of Digital Health Interventions (DHI). The search of 10 databases yielded 21 relevant systematic reviews conducted between 2006 and 2020. "The 21 reviews were published between 2007 and 2019 and included primary research papers spanning 1997–2018."
DHI, have the potential to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of palliative care, the authors of this review explain. Through the search conducted, 332 publications were found distributed in the following types of interventions: palliative care for education (20%), videoconferencing (17%), electronic medical records (16%), symptom management (15%), telephone (13%) decision making (13%), information provision or management (13%), and communication (9%).
The reviews reported positive impacts on interventions related to education, information exchange, decision making, communication, and costs. However, impacts on quality of life and symptoms related to physical and mental health were inconclusive.
Ten reviews addressed general areas such as telehealth, tele-hospice, Digital Health, Information and Communication Technologies and the remaining 11 had more specific approaches such as electronic health records, internet, blogs, mobile health, telephone, videoconferencing and simulators. Digital Health Interventions related to palliative care in each review accounted for between 5 and 39.
Currently, DHI, have increased the number of implementations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "This meta-review has synthesised the corpus of research evidence represented by existing systematic reviews in this area. The overall evidence suggests that DHIs can be useful, safe and acceptable to many terminally ill patients, their caregivers and staff involved in their care," the authors explain in their conclusions.
"Future meta-reviews would benefit from looser inclusion criteria to capture other types of reviews containing evidence on emerging innovations such as wearables, smartphone apps, robotics and artificial intelligence," they conclude
Review the meta-analysis of systematic reviews at the following link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-021-00430-7
