JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

mHealth interventions are being designed to support individuals in having better control and understanding of their health, and some are integrating health care professionals (HCP) in the process. Whereas in principle having access to patients´ health data produced outside the clinical settings might seem like an interesting idea, for both patients and professionals, its implications involve multiple considerations and challenges in practice. Not all HCP might trust, or be interested in using patient-generated data for clinical purposes, and even if most of them were to commit to such an endeavor, not all of them might find the same types of data to be useful, or not all of them might be willing to invest additional time in analyzing this data. HCP may have reservations about utilizing this data in clinical decision-making as such data sets may be new and unfamiliar to them.

Objective:

This protocol aims to systematically guide the review of existing literature to identify aspects such as the profiles of HCP that are using electronic patient-generated health data (PGHD) generated through mobile devices; what types of electronic PGHD are they using, how such data is being accessed, and according to HCP perspectives, what benefits it offers in the care pathway of chronic conditions.

Methods:

The Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 were followed for the design of the search, selection, and data synthesis processes. Electronic searches for studies will be done on PubMed, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and Web of Science.

Results:

Preliminary searches have been done, and previous related systematic reviews and scoping reviews have been found and evaluated. The review is expected to be completed in November 2022.

Conclusions:

Discussion: This protocol will provide the guidelines to review the use, by HCP, of electronic PGHD produced by commercial mobile and wearable devices. While there have been previous reviews on PGHD, our approach may provide a wider understanding of the types of HCP profiles using electronic PGHD from mobile technologies and why and how they are using it. This knowledge could contribute to designing tools and strategies to promote a more efficient integration of electronic PGHD into the clinical practices related to the treatment of chronic conditions.