JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Health kiosks are public access computing devices that provide access to services including health information provision, clinical measurement collection, patient self-check-in, telemonitoring and teleconsultation. While the increase in internet access and ownership of smart personal devices could make kiosks redundant, recent reports have predicted that the market will continue to grow.

Objective:

We sought to clarify the current and future roles of health kiosks by investigating: (a) the setting, role, and clinical domains in which kiosks are used, (b) their effectiveness in promoting behavior change, (c) which health services they are best able to deliver, (d) how user experience evaluation is performed, and (e) what the barriers and facilitators are for kiosks used in remote consultations.

Methods:

We conducted a rapid review by a bibliographic search of the Google Scholar, Pubmed and Web of Science databases for studies and other publications between January 2009 and June 2020. Eligible papers describe the implementation, either as primary studies, systematic reviews, or news and feature articles. Additional reports were obtained by manual searching and through key informants. For each article we abstracted settings, purposes, health domains, whether the kiosk was opportunistic or integrated with a clinical pathway, if the kiosk was used to promote behavioral change, and inclusion of usability testing.

Results:

A total of 138 articles were included, 131 primary studies and seven reviews. 46.6% of the primary studies described kiosks in secondary care settings, other settings included community (24.4%), primary care (17.6%), and pharmacies (6.1%). The most common roles of health kiosks were providing health information (34.4%), taking clinical measurements (21.4%), screening (13.0%), telehealth (8.4%), and patient registration (6.1%). The five most frequent health domains were multiple conditions (25.2%), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) (7.6%), hypertension (7.6%), pediatric injuries (5.3%), health and wellbeing (4.6%) and drug monitoring (4.6%). Kiosks were integrated in the clinical pathway in 65.9%, opportunistic kiosks accounted for 23.1% and 11.0% were being used in both. Behavior change interventions were reported in only 8.0% of the studies and usability of kiosk in 18.8%. Barriers (use of expensive proprietary software) and enablers (handling on-demand consultations) to using health kiosks for teleconsultation were identified.

Conclusions:

Health kiosks still play a vital role in the healthcare system, including collecting clinical measurements and providing access to online health services to the elderly population and others without internet access. We identified research gaps, such as lack of a theoretical framework in behavior change interventions, training needs for teleconsultations, and scant reporting on usability evaluation methods.