Use of Information and Communication Technology Before, During, and After a Consultation for Chronic Diseases: Scoping Review (Preprint)
Authors: Randine Pietro , Sharma Aakash , Hartvigsen Gunnar , Johansen Håvard Dagenborg , Årsand Eirik 
Published: December 2020

BACKGROUND

A consultation is a meeting between patients and health personnel, conducted physically or in any form of non-face-to-face interaction. Consultations are critical for providing treatment and health-management advice, and for the exchange of information especially for people living with chronic diseases.
Consultations can be supported by different Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based solutions referred to as eHealth, mHealth, telehealth, telemedicine, and others. The use of ICT in health is often accompanied by security and privacy challenges due to the sensitive nature of health information.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this scoping review was to map the existing knowledge regarding the use of ICT for consultation in chronic diseases. The review objective was guided by three research questions: (1) which Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are being used by people with chronic diseases, health personnel, and others such as families before, during, and after consultations, (2) which type of information is managed by these ICTs, and (3) how are security and privacy issues addressed?

METHODS

We performed a literature search in ACM, IEEE, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science and included primary studies from January 2015 until June 2020 that used ICT before, during, and/or after a consultation for chronic diseases. This review presents and discuss the findings from the included publications structured around the three research questions.

RESULTS

The initial search yielded 1888 results, of which 24 studies met the inclusion criteria. However, only 5 studies reported the use of ICTs both before, during, and after consultations. The main ICTs identified were smartphone apps, web-based portals, cloud infrastructures, and electronic health record systems.
With regards to the type of information managed by these ICTs, we identified 9 categories: physiological data, treatment information, medical history, consultation medium like images or videos, laboratory results, reminders, lifestyle parameters, symptoms, and patient identification.
Different devices like sensors, and wearable devices were used in 23 studies to gather diverse type of information. However, in 10 of these 23 studies, the information was manually reported via mobile devices.
Privacy issues were addressed in only 8 of the included studies, whereas some security issues were addressed in 20 studies.

CONCLUSIONS

This scoping review highlights the possibility of a new model for consultations for chronic diseases. The recent advancements in ICT emphasize that consultations could be more than physical or remote meetings. They could also comprise of preparations by patients and health personnel before the actual consultation, and follow-ups after the consultation.
Despite the potential benefits offered by an ICT solution, there are still limited conceptions of security and privacy of ICTs which present an obstacle in their implementation as part of real-world settings.