Abstract
Objectives: This study aimed to review definitions of digital health and understand their relevance for health outcomes research. Four umbrella terms (digital health, electronic health, mobile health, and telehealth/telemedicine) were summarized in this article. Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Library, and EconLit were searched from January 2015 to May 2020 for systematic reviews containing key Medical Subject Headings terms for digital health (n = 38) and synonyms of “definition.” Independent pairs of reviewers performed each stage of the review, with reconciliation by a third reviewer if required. A single reviewer consolidated each definition for consistency. We performed text analysis via word clouds and computed document frequency-and inverse corpus frequency scores. Results: The search retrieved 2610 records with 545 articles (20.9%) taken forward for full-text review. Of these, 39.3% (214 of 545) were eligible for data extraction, of which 134 full-text articles were retained for this analysis containing 142 unique definitions of umbrella terms (digital health [n = 4], electronic health [n = 36], mobile health [n = 50], and telehealth/telemedicine [n = 52]). Seminal definitions exist but have increasingly been adapted over time and new definitions were created. Nevertheless, the most characteristic words extracted from the definitions via the text analyses still showed considerable overlap between the 4 umbrella terms. Conclusions: To focus evidence summaries for outcomes research purposes, umbrella terms should be accompanied by Medical Subject Headings terms reflecting population, intervention, comparator, outcome, timing, and setting. Ultimately a functional classification system is needed to create standardized terminology for digital health interventions denoting the domains of patient-level effects and outcomes.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1469-1479 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Value in Health |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2022 |
Funding
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Ms Burrell and Drs Zrubka and Asche reported serving as cochairs of the Digital Health Special Interest Group key project. Dr Zrubka reported receiving funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 679681); reported receiving funding from project no. TKP2020-NKA-02 of the National Research, Development, and Innovation Fund of Hungary, financed under the Tématerületi Kiválósági Program; and reported receiving consulting fees from Roche Hungary Ltd. Dr Zah reported developing a user interface that included a user design of clinical outcomes assessment, including digital electronic clinical outcomes assessment best practices for The International Society for Quality of Life Research. Dr Entwistle reported the use of a Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices work laptop to complete the work. Dr Boltenyenkov is employed by and reported stock ownership in Siemens Healthineers. Dr Roydhouse reported receiving consulting fees from Amgen and the University of Birmingham Enterprise. No other disclosures were reported. The authors acknowledge the ISPOR Digital Health SIG members who contributed to the screening of titles, abstracts, or full texts (Colin Pfeiffer, Long Le, Manthan Janodia, Menna Sharkawy, Mete Şaylan, Sang-Soo Lee, Sean Glynn, Arijit Ganguli, Sherif Badawy, Luiz Sérgio Carvalho, Brian Seal, Cecile Van Steen, Naiya Patel, Hailey Lee, Abigail Doe, Lisa Strouss, Luis Angelilo, Chad Patel, and Sanjoy Paul) and the SIG members who provided comments on the manuscript (Shaun Lee, Mei Yang, Masami Kelly, Dana Kendzia, Aditi Aggarwal, Yaya Togo, Rana Maroun, Jinma Ren, Paco Cerletti, Anu Suokas, Ruth Jeminiwa, Raheshwari Nair, and Dingwei Dai). Our thanks to the MBA students at Kozminiski University (Aleksandra Musiałek,Victor Bernal Alpizar, Ratnakar Singh, PiotrKulas, Agata Nosowicz, Anastasia Nichukhina, Anna Szalpuk, Raman Nakazny, and Kamila Giemz) and Marie McWhirter from the Library of the Health Sciences College of Medicine at Peoria, University of Illinois at Chicago and Barbara Toth, master graduate at Corvinus University of Budapest, for their help with the literature search and retrieval of articles and Hossein Motahari Nezhad, PhD student at Corvinus University of Budapest, for help in data cleaning. Finally, we thank the ISPOR staff Amy Pavlock, Theresa Tesoro, and Arturo Cabra for their assistance and support to the SIG.
Keywords
- definition
- digital health
- electronic health
- mobile health
- outcomes research
- systematic review
- telehealth
- telemedicine
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health Policy
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health