Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 4, 2021
Date Accepted: Oct 14, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of attrition within digital health interventions for people with multiple sclerosis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital health interventions (DHI) have revolutionised the management of multiple sclerosis (MS). It is now understood that the technological elements that comprise DHIs can influence participant engagement and that people with MS (PwMS) can experience significant barriers to remaining enrolled in DHIs related to the use of these elements. It is essential to explore the influence of technological elements in mitigating attrition after allocation.
Objective:
We examined the study design and technological elements of documented DHIs targeted at PwMS and how these correlated with attrition among participants of randomised-controlled trials (RCTs).
Methods:
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs (n=17) describing digital technologies for health interventions for PwMS. We analysed attrition of included studies using a random-effects model and meta-regression to measure the association between potential moderators.
Results:
There were no measured differences in attrition between intervention and control arms; however, some of the heterogeneity observed was explained by the composite technological element score. The pooled attrition rates for the intervention and control arms were 10.6% and 11.2% respectively.
Conclusions:
Ultimately, this paper provides insight into the technological composition of DHIs and will aid in the design of future studies in this area.
Citation
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Copyright
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