Understanding the effectiveness and quality of Virtual Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings in any healthcare setting: A scoping review.
Creators: name: Onifade, Anjola
name: McInnerney, Daisy
name: Quaife, Samantha
name: Mughal, Muntzer
name: Chung, Donna
name: Goodman, Jake
name: Holden, David
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Medicine and Health Sciences

description: A MDT meeting consists of a group of professionals from one or more clinical disciplines who together make decisions regarding recommended treatment of individual patients (1). They were first introduced in the 1990s as a mandatory part of cancer care to ensure equality of access to standardised and high-quality care (2–4). Cancer patients treated through MDTs demonstrated improved satisfaction, received more timely treatment, and in certain tumour types, better survival rates (5–8). As a result, MDTs are more widely accepted in other specialties, with many hospitals implementing the use of regular MDT meetings for various conditions, particularly those that are chronic in nature (9–11). MDT meetings can occur face-to-face, virtually (using videoconferencing or telemedicine platforms) or in a hybrid format (with some members joining the meeting in person, and others joining remotely). Studies suggest that virtual and hybrid MDT meetings have already been in practice for over a decade (12–14). They were initially implemented to facilitate MDT discussions for rare or unusual tumours and address logistical problems particularly in rural areas with limited healthcare facilities (15). Recently, the restrictions on interpersonal contact introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic have forced more MDT meetings to take place virtually instead of face-to-face. Studies have shown that whilst there are some advantages to virtual/hybrid MDT meetings formats (e.g., elimination of geographical barriers), there are also distinct disadvantages (e.g., connectivity and technology difficulties, and the introduction of novel forms of distraction) (16). Currently, there is no systematic review that directly compares the quality and effectiveness of face-to-face MDT meetings to those hosted in virtual or hybrid formats. It is therefore not known to what extent the transition to virtual and hybrid MDT meeting formats may have affected the quality of care received by patients, and whether these formats should continue to be supported beyond the pandemic. However, designing a systematic review or meta-analysis to make such a comparison is complicated by a lack of clarity on several important factors. For example, the definitions of virtual and hybrid meetings vary across the literature. It is also not clear which research methods are most commonly used to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of MDT meetings (i.e. study designs and outcome measures), nor how widely this has been studied, and in which health and care settings. Therefore, we are conducting a scoping review to map the existing literature evaluating the quality and effectiveness of virtual and hybrid MDT meetings. The review aims to clarify definitions of the terms 'virtual' and 'hybrid' in the field of MDT meetings; to understand the health and care settings in which they have been evaluated; and map the study designs and outcome measures used to evaluate them. The findings can, in turn, inform the feasibility and design of a systematic review to more definitively evaluate the quality and effectiveness of virtual and hybrid MDT meetings. We will also seek to make preliminary inferences about the quality and effectiveness of virtual and hybrid MDT meetings, in order to inform hypothesis development to test in a systematic review. Finally, we will aim to extract reported facilitators and barriers to delivering best practice in virtual and hybrid MDT meetings