Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Nov 20, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 21, 2025 - Jan 16, 2026
Date Accepted: Jun 7, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Features of virtual navigation systems for health care and social services that impact patient outcomes: Protocol for a scoping review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Patient navigation is a critical component of health care delivery, facilitating connections with appropriate services. A new era of virtual navigators are being developed that can be accessed through the web or smartphone application. However, it is unknown what features make virtual navigators accessible and reliable.
Objective:
The objective of this scoping review is to understand the current landscape of existing virtual navigation systems. In this review we will determine the features of these systems and barriers to accessibility they’ve identified.
Methods:
This review will follow the guidelines for scoping reviews outlined by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. A search strategy will be used to locate both published and unpublished literature. The databases to be searched include PubMed, PsycINFO (ProQuest), Cochrane Library, Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate), Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (EBSCO), ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library. Articles will be screened, selected, and extracted by 2 independent members of the research team. Results will be presented in table format and accompanied by a narrative summary.
Results:
As of September 2025, the preliminary stages of the scoping review have been completed. We anticipate the full scoping review manuscript will be prepared for submission by February 2026.
Conclusions:
This review will synthesize the current literature of virtual navigation tools and recommendations systems that aim to connect users to the appropriate health care services. By identifying trends and gaps, this review will provide critical information for the development of new and innovative systems that can support healthcare and public health systems.
Citation
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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.