JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Symptom checkers (SCs) for laypersons’ self-assessment and preliminary self-diagnosis are a spreading technology used by the general public. Little is known about the impact of these tools on Health Care Professionals (HCPs) in primary care and their work. This is relevant to understand how technological changes might affect working worlds and how this is linked to work-related psychosocial demands and resources for HCPs.

Objective:

The aim of this scoping review (ScR) was to systematically explore the existing knowledge on the impacts of SC on HCPs in primary care and to identify gaps in knowledge.

Methods:

We conceptualized a search string and searched PubMed (Medline) and CINAHL in January and June 2021. Of 2729 publications identified through initial and follow-up database search, 2113 publications were screened for inclusion. 2075 records were excluded and full texts (n=43) were screened. n=8 publications were included through additional manual search in November 2021, reference search did not bring further results. A total number of 17 relevant publications were included in the final sample. We used thematic analysis to analyse the data and identify core themes.

Results:

We identified 5 main themes concerning the impacts of SCs on physicians in primary care and in other settings. The theme “finding pre-diagnosis” comprises the comparison between SCs and physicians. We identified the performance of diagnosis and the relevance of human factor as topics. In the theme “user-technology-relationship”, we identified potentials for laypersons’ empowerment and harm through SCs. Our analysis showed disruptions of the doctor-patient-relationship and uncontested roles of HCPs in the theme “[impacts on] Doctor-patient-relationship”. In the theme “impacts on HCPs’ work content”, we described the reduction or increase of workload of HCPs as topics. We identified potential transformations of HCPs work and impacts on the health care system in the fifth theme “Future role of SCs in health care”

Conclusions:

We identified research gaps in the literature surrounding the impact of AI-based self-diagnosing apps/tools on the work of HCPs in primary care. More empirical studies are needed as the literature depicts expectations rather than empirical data to date.