Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 20, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 20, 2023 - Mar 17, 2023
Date Accepted: Jun 5, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
eHealth technologies for monitoring of pediatric asthma at home: a scoping review
ABSTRACT
Background:
eHealth monitoring technologies offers opportunities to more objectively assess symptoms when they appear in daily life. Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood with an episodic course, requiring close follow-up of pediatric asthma control to identify disease deterioration, prevent exacerbations and enhance quality of life. eHealth technologies in pediatric asthma care show promising results regarding feasibility, acceptability and asthma related health outcomes. However, broad systematic evaluations of eHealth technologies in pediatric asthma are lacking.
Objective:
The objective of this scoping review is to identify the types and applications of eHealth technologies for monitoring and treatment in pediatric asthma and explore which monitoring domains show most relevance or potential for future research.
Methods:
A scoping review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. A systematic and comprehensive search was performed on English papers that investigated the development, validation or application of eHealth technologies for home-monitoring or treatment in pediatric asthma in the following databases: Pubmed, the Cochrane Library, IEEE, Scopus, CINAHL, PsycINFO and ACM digital library. Two authors independently assessed eligibility and extracted data. Data were presented by a descriptive analysis of characteristics and a narrative report per eHealth domain.
Results:
The review included 370 manuscripts. Ten monitoring domains were identified: air quality, airway inflammation marker, lung function, physical activity, sleep, audiovisual, other physiological measurements, questionnaires, medication monitoring and digital environment (i.e. digital platforms, applications, websites and software tools to monitor or support monitoring). Rising numbers of studies were seen, which accelerated over the last years throughout most domains, especially medication monitoring and digital environment. Limited studies of multi-parameter monitoring strategies were seen. The number of monitoring validation studies remained stable while development and intervention studies increased. Interventions outcomes seem to indicate at least non-inferiority, and potential superiority, of eHealth monitoring in pediatric asthma.
Conclusions:
This systematic scoping review provides a unique overview of eHealth pediatric asthma monitoring studies and revealed that eHealth research takes place throughout different monitoring domains using different approaches. The outcomes of the review showed potency for efficacy of most monitoring domains. Future studies could focus on combining home-monitoring domains to facilitate multi-parameter decision making and personalized clinical decision support.
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Copyright
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