JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital interventions can provide cost-effective, quality healthcare for patients with chronic conditions. Patients with chronic conditions often are burdened by a substantial load of adhering to treatment regimen and suffer from impacts on their function and well-being. This treatment burden has consequences for treatment adherence and disease outcomes. Digital interventions have the potential to alleviate the burden, but they also may cause additional burden to the patient.

Objective:

This systematic review aims to identify, summarize and synthesize the evidence of how digital interventions impact the treatment burden of people with chronic conditions.

Methods:

We searched databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, ACM, PubMed Central and CINAHL for articles published between January 1, 2013, and October 16, 2023. Two reviewers independently screened the articles in two stages, extracted data from included articles, and assessed their quality using The Critical Appraisal tools from Joanna Briggs Institute. Convergent integrated approach was used for data synthesis and integration.

Results:

We included 39 relevant studies in total. We categorized the interventions into four types: Telehealth, Informational resources, Self-management tools, and Facilitated tools. The results of this study indicate that digital interventions mostly support patients with chronic conditions with their treatment burden, with minor concerns of increasing treatment burden. Patients with lower initial treatment burden who used self-management tools were the only group reporting more negative than positive impacts. The main benefits are support with self-management, informational support, and easier ways to contact healthcare professionals (HCPs). The main concerns were accessibility issues, time-consuming tools, and causing fear and anxiety.

Conclusions:

Our findings demonstrate how treatment burden is a relevant concept for future digital healthcare research and practice. Digital interventions can help patients with their treatment burden by supporting self-management, improving access to healthcare, improving patient’s experience, and addressing relevant concerns. More research is needed about conditions with low or medium initial treatment burden.