Remote follow-up technologies in traumatic brain injury: a scoping review

J Neurotrauma. 2022 Jun 21. doi: 10.1089/neu.2022.0138. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Motivations for outcome data collection in TBI are threefold: to improve patient outcomes; facilitate research; and provide the means and methods for wider injury surveillance. Such data plays a pivotal role in population health, and ways to increase the reliability of data collection following TBI should be pursued. As a result, technology-aided follow-up of neurotrauma patients is on the rise; there is, therefore, a need to describe how such technologies have been used in post-TBI follow-up. A scoping review was conducted and reported using the PRISMA extension (PRISMA-ScR). Five electronic databases (Embase, MEDLINE, Global Health, PsycInfo, Scopus), were searched systematically using keywords derived from the concepts of 'telemedicine', 'TBI', 'outcome assessment', and 'patient-generated health data'. In total, 40 studies described follow-up technologies utilising telephones (52.5%, n = 21), SMS (10%, n = 4), smartphones (22.5%, n = 9), videoconferencing (10%, n = 4), digital assistants (2.5%, n = 1), and custom devices (2.5%, n = 1) amongst TBI patient cohorts of varying injury severity. Additionally, where reported, clinical facilitators, remote follow-up timing and intervals between sessions, the synchronicity of follow-up instances, proxy involvement, outcome measures utilised, and technology evaluation efforts are described. Follow-up technologies can aid more temporally-sensitive assessments that can capture fluctuating sequelae, a benefit that may be of particular relevance to TBI cohorts. However, the evidence base surrounding follow-up technologies remains in its infancy, particularly with respect to large samples, LMIC patient cohorts, and the validation of outcome measures for deployment via such remote technology.

PMID:35730115 | DOI:10.1089/neu.2022.0138