The role of home-based information and communications technology interventions in chronic disease management: a systematic literature review

Abstract

This article presents a systematic literature review done to evaluate the feasibility and benefits of home-based information and communications technology enabled interventions for chronic disease management, with emphasis on their impact on health outcomes and costs. Relevant articles were retrieved from PubMed and evaluated using quality worksheets with pre-identified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of the 256 articles retrieved, 27 were found to concord with the study criteria. Evaluation of the identified articles was conducted irrespective of study design, type of home-based intervention or chronic disease involved. The review demonstrates that HBIs applied to chronic disease management improve functional and cognitive patient outcomes and reduce healthcare spending. However, further research is needed to assess benefit in terms of evidence-based outcome indicators (that can provide a basis for meta-analysis), to confirm sustainable cost benefits, and to systematically collect data on physician satisfaction with patient management.

Information and communication technology-based innovations for aging healthcare: a literature review

“…With respect to the related works, author acknowledges the approach using a systematic literature review conducted by Gaikwad and Warren (2009) which evaluated the feasibility and benefits of home-based ICT enabled interventions for chronic disease management. Using similar approach, Barlow et al (2007) conducted a literature review of home tele-care related to the frail elderly and chronically ill.…”

“…Articles related to disease specific innovations and medical issues for older people were excluded. Following a searching guideline described by Gaikwad and Warren (2009), we retrieved each article that passed the inclusion criteria with respect to: 1 innovations/technological relations to objective 2 country in which research was performed 4 study results and outcomes as a means to the older people's benefits 5 conclusions drawn from the study. Table 1 shows the title of the journals in health informatics, relevant publishers and numbers of associated articles that were primarily considered for our analysis.…”

“…A range of perspectives have been introduced to improve support services such as through e-health in elderly primary care (Flynn et al, 2009), through decision support systems for pressure ulcers (Fossuma et al, 2011) and through mobile-based applications for keeping elderly population more connected and improving awareness of their health issues. Researchers, policy makers, and funding bodies have attracted the attention of governments as the healthcare spending has rapidly escalated (Gaikwad and Warren, 2009). For instance, the growing burden of chronic diseases and overall increased awareness to improving quality of care (WHO, 2002) has increased demand in the context of reduced support of elderly healthcare and flawed funding models as well as public outcry about inadequate services for the elderly.…”

“…Therefore, in many instances elderly populations became the only target users of healthcare resources commercially, due to improved options in intelligent devices, internet availability and rapid uptake of emergent technologies. At the same time, the requirement for increased attention, care and monitoring needs of the elderly population group have spearheaded advances in technology uptake among healthcare providers (Capel et al, 2007;Gaikwad and Warren, 2009).…”

“…First direction focuses on improving internal or in-house process to help various practitioners and stakeholders in relation to information management (Randell et al, 2009;Georgiou et al, 2011). Second direction focused on information delivery for public, e.g., within a non-clinical context for individual end-users or patients community who need healthcare support for their well-being and independent every-day living (Joe and Demiris, 2013;Capel et al, 2007;Pulman, 2010;Gaikwad and Warren, 2009;Andreassen et al, 2007). Extending the second direction, our study highlights the key problem area of ICT applications for supporting independent lifestyle of elderly populations in order to identify a new approach of information delivery that may be suitable both to service providers and end-users community groups.…”