JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Chronic pain is a highly prevalent condition and one of the most common reasons why people seek healthcare. As a result, chronic pain has a significant personal and economic burden. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the situation for chronic pain patients, through increased risk factors (e.g., anxiety/depression) as well as decreased access to healthcare. Digital health solutions to support people with chronic pain are becoming increasingly popular. Most of the research has focused on patient-facing digital health solutions, although it is clear that involvement of health and care professionals is crucial in chronic pain care. Certainly, digital health solutions intended for the use of health and care professionals in the care of chronic pain patients (i.e., professional-facing) exist, e.g., for clinical decision support, however no review has investigated the studies reporting these interventions.

Objective:

The overall aim of this scoping review is to identify the available professional-facing digital health solutions for the purpose of chronic pain management. The objectives of this review are to investigate the components, target populations and user settings of the available professional-facing digital solutions, health and care professionals’ perspectives of using digital health solutions (if reported), the methods in which the digital health solutions are developed and outcomes of using professional-facing digital health solutions.

Methods:

Databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycInfo and Inspec will be searched for studies reporting professional-facing digital health solutions for chronic pain care, using a comprehensive search strategy developed for each of the specific databases. Two independent reviewers will screen the titles and abstracts for review inclusion, then conduct full-text screening. Any conflicts in study inclusion will be resolved by a third reviewer at each stage of the screening process. Following data extraction and quality assessment, a qualitative content analysis of the results will be conducted.

Results:

This review will identify the available professional-facing digital health solutions for chronic pain management. The results of this review are likely to be heterogeneous, in terms of content (i.e., the digital solutions will serve a variety of purposes, settings, target populations etc.) and methods (i.e., experimental and non-experimental designs).

Conclusions:

This review will contribute to the growing field of research into the utility of digital health for chronic pain management. Findings from this review will help provide further information on how digital health can be used to care for chronic pain patients in a post-pandemic, digital age.