Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Nov 21, 2018
Date Accepted: Jul 27, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Scoping Review on Virtual Coaching in Medical Care: Rehabilitation, the great absentee
ABSTRACT
Background:
In the last years, several studies have been focused on describe and understanding how Virtual Coaches could be key drivers for health promotion in home care settings. As there is enormous technological progress in the field of artificial intelligence and data processing in the past decade, the use of virtual coaches gains an augmented attention in the considerations of medical innovations.
Objective:
The present scoping review aims at providing an overview on the applications of virtual coach in clinical field. In particular, the review is focused on the papers that provide tangible information for coaching activities with active implication to engage and guide patients who have an ongoing plan of care.
Methods:
We aimed to investigate the use of the term “virtual coach” in the clinical field performing a systematical review of the relevant literature indexing on PubMed and Scopus databases in order to find VC papers focused on specific activities dealing with clinical or medical contexts, excluding those aimed to surgical settings or e-learning purposes.
Results:
After a careful revision of inclusion/exclusion criteria, 29 records were selected to undergo the full-text review. Most of the identified articles directly or indirectly addressed the topic of physical activity. Some papers were focused on the use of VC to manage overweight or nutritional issues. Other papers dealt with technological interfaces to facilitate interactions with patients suffering different chronic clinical conditions such as heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression and chronic pain.
Conclusions:
Although the physical activity is the healthy practice that is most encouraged by a virtual coach system, in the current scenario, rehabilitation is the great absentee. This review gives to research group involved in virtual coach design and implementation an overview on tangible applications of this tool in clinics, medical, and rehabilitation application. This offers the possibility to inspire new ideas for future works in virtual coaching fields.
Citation
