Journal of medical Internet research
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2013
ReviewOnline prevention aimed at lifestyle behaviors: a systematic review of reviews.
Interventions aimed at behavior change are increasingly being delivered over the Internet. Although research on intervention effectiveness has been widely conducted, their true public health impact as indicated by reach, effectiveness, and use is unclear. ⋯ More research is needed on effective elements instead of effective interventions, with special attention to long-term effectiveness. The reach and use of interventions need more scientific input to increase the public health impact of Internet-delivered interventions.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2013
Review Meta AnalysisSystematic reviews and meta-analyses of home telemonitoring interventions for patients with chronic diseases: a critical assessment of their methodological quality.
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of home telemonitoring interventions for patients with chronic diseases have increased over the past decade and become increasingly important to a wide range of clinicians, policy makers, and other health care stakeholders. While a few criticisms about their methodological rigor and synthesis approaches have recently appeared, no formal appraisal of their quality has been conducted yet. ⋯ Despite the availability of methodological guidelines that can be utilized to guide the proper conduct of systematic reviews and meta-analyses and eliminate potential risks of bias, this knowledge has not yet been fully integrated in the area of home telemonitoring. Further efforts should be made to improve the design, conduct, reporting, and publication of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in this area.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2013
ReviewWikis and collaborative writing applications in health care: a scoping review.
Collaborative writing applications (eg, wikis and Google Documents) hold the potential to improve the use of evidence in both public health and health care. The rapid rise in their use has created the need for a systematic synthesis of the evidence of their impact as knowledge translation (KT) tools in the health care sector and for an inventory of the factors that affect their use. ⋯ Although we found some experimental and quasi-experimental studies of the effectiveness and safety of CWAs as educational and KT interventions, the vast majority of included studies were observational case studies about CWAs being used by health professionals and patients. More primary research is needed to find ways to address the different barriers to their use and to make these applications more useful for different stakeholders.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2013
ReviewEvidence of effectiveness of health care professionals using handheld computers: a scoping review of systematic reviews.
Handheld computers and mobile devices provide instant access to vast amounts and types of useful information for health care professionals. Their reduced size and increased processing speed has led to rapid adoption in health care. Thus, it is important to identify whether handheld computers are actually effective in clinical practice. ⋯ This scoping review summarizes the secondary evidence for effectiveness of handheld computers and mhealth. It provides a snapshot of effective use by health care professionals across four key functions. We identified evidence to suggest that handheld computers provide easy and timely access to information and enable accurate and complete documentation. Further, they can give health care professionals instant access to evidence-based decision support and patient management systems to improve clinical decision making. Finally, there is evidence that handheld computers allow health professionals to be more efficient in their work practices. It is anticipated that this evidence will guide clinicians and managers in implementing handheld computers in clinical practice and in designing future research.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2013
ReviewMobile health (mHealth) approaches and lessons for increased performance and retention of community health workers in low- and middle-income countries: a review.
Mobile health (mHealth) describes the use of portable electronic devices with software applications to provide health services and manage patient information. With approximately 5 billion mobile phone users globally, opportunities for mobile technologies to play a formal role in health services, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, are increasingly being recognized. mHealth can also support the performance of health care workers by the dissemination of clinical updates, learning materials, and reminders, particularly in underserved rural locations in low- and middle-income countries where community health workers deliver integrated community case management to children sick with diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria. ⋯ With partnerships forming between governments, technologists, non-governmental organizations, academia, and industry, there is great potential to improve health services delivery by using mHealth in low- and middle-income countries. As with many other health improvement projects, a key challenge is moving mHealth approaches from pilot projects to national scalable programs while properly engaging health workers and communities in the process. By harnessing the increasing presence of mobile phones among diverse populations, there is promising evidence to suggest that mHealth can be used to deliver increased and enhanced health care services to individuals and communities, while helping to strengthen health systems.