Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 23, 2025
Date Accepted: May 9, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Methodologies in Economic Evaluations of Remote Patient Monitoring for Chronic Conditions: Systematic Scoping Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) offers a potential solution to manage the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions challenges in healthcare systems worldwide, but its economic evaluation remains unsolved.
Objective:
To explore methodologies used in economic evaluations of RPM for chronic conditions. It focuses on approaches to cost estimation, including cost identification, measurement and valuation, as well as the reporting quality.
Methods:
A systematic scoping review searching Embase, Medline, CINAHL, and Web of Science identified 41 articles. Economic evaluation methods and reporting quality were assessed using the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) checklist. Data were synthesized thematically. The protocol for this review was registered in the Open Science Framework.
Results:
Studies employed diverse evaluation methods: cost-effectiveness analysis (20 studies), cost-utility analysis (13 studies), cost-consequence analysis (7 studies), cost-minimization analysis (3 studies), cost analysis (8 studies), and budget impact analysis (1 study). Significant variability in cost methodologies and inconsistent reporting were observed. Adherence to updated standards like CHEERS 2022 was limited, with gaps in sensitivity analyses and transparency in cost data.
Conclusions:
Economic evaluations of RPM show mixed cost-effectiveness results. Key limitations include inconsistent cost methodologies and inadequate adherence to reporting standards, complicating cross-study comparisons. Future research should prioritize standardized, transparent reporting protocols to enhance the comparability and generalizability of findings for RPM.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.