JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The rapid expansion of telehealth services, driven by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, necessitates systematic evaluation to guarantee the quality, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of telehealth services and programs in the United States (U.S.). While numerous evaluation frameworks have emerged, crafted by various stakeholders, their comprehensiveness is limited and the overall state of telehealth evaluation remains unclear.

Objective:

This scoping review aims to i) map the existing landscape of telehealth evaluation, ii) identify key concepts for evaluation, iii) synthesize existing evaluation frameworks, and iv) identify measurements and assessments considered in the U.S.

Methods:

The scoping review will be conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology for scoping reviews and in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The search strategy will locate published documents from PubMed (U.S. National Library of Medicine), Health Technology Assessments (International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment), and Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics). The websites of telehealth stakeholders, professional organizations, and authoritative sources will be screened for additional papers. Two reviewers will independently screen titles and abstracts, followed by the full-text review against the inclusion criteria. Two reviewers will extract data using a JBI-based data extraction tool for scoping review. Data will be synthesized through narrative summaries, tables, and figures to present key concepts and relationships between frameworks. This scoping review will consider documents, including reviews, reports, and white papers, published since January 1, 2019. It will focus on evaluation frameworks and associated measurements of telehealth services and programs in the U.S. healthcare system, developed by telehealth stakeholders, professional organizations, and authoritative sources, excluding those developed by individual researchers, to collect data that reflect the collective expertise and consensus of experts within the respective professional group.

Results:

Data extracted from selected documents will be synthesized using tools, such as tables and figures. Visual aids like the Venn diagram will be employed to illustrate the relationships between the evaluation frameworks from various sources. A narrative summary will be crafted to further describe how the results align with the review objectives, facilitating a comprehensive overview of the findings.

Conclusions:

By addressing critical gaps in telehealth evaluation, this scoping review protocol lays the foundation for comprehensive and multi-stakeholder assessment of telehealth services and programs. Its findings will inform policymakers, healthcare providers, researchers, and other stakeholders in advancing the quality, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of telehealth in the U.S. healthcare system. Clinical Trial: Open Science Framework AYTUS; https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/AYTUS