Previous studies on the impact telehealth tools had on caregiver support showed potential benefits, but evidence of quality is lacking. A new systematic review on the topic was published June 18 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
The number of published works exploring the impact of telehealth on patients' quality of care has increased, but there are few studies examining telehealth’s effect on caregivers of cancer patients. In this review, researchers analyzed published articles to identify telehealth’s feasibility in supporting cancer caregivers.
“Even though much has been done concerning patient empowerment, more attention needs to be paid to the effects and support of telemedicine on family caregivers and on how promising eHealth programs are in responding to their needs,” wrote first author Chiara Marzorati, MSc, and colleagues. “Despite caregivers’ requests for provision of support and information competence, a recent meta-review on the effects of eHealth for cancer patients and caregivers concluded that there is indeed a paucity of systematic reviews on this topic and that Web-based interventions focused on family members are still an unexplored area.”
Researchers searched for relevant published works in a variety of databases including Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar and PsycINFO. A total of 24 studies were included in the analysis, 21 of which highlighted the patient-caregiver relationship.
Findings included:
- Studies focused on the caregiver’s condition from an individual and relational point of view.
- Some studies monitored engagement and user satisfaction ratings when using online telehealth platforms.
- Caregivers reported difficulties in communicating with the patient about the disease.
- All studies reported significant improvements in some of the investigated areas, but they often showed small effect sizes.
- Web-based platforms and telehealth calls were the two main methods used in providing caregiver support.
“It is crucial to identify unmet family needs or priority clusters and to take into account the relation to cost-effectiveness trends,” concluded Marzorati and colleagues. “There is a paucity of studies assessing the economic value of psychosocial interventions with standardized methods. Future studies can provide further cost-related information to support decision-making processes and the planning of new large-scale care services. To achieve value-based health care, it is important to devise cost-effective study designs and to implement the most appropriate data collection methods and procedures in order for the results to be generalizable across different populations and contexts.”
Cara joined TriMed Media in 2016 and is currently a Senior Writer for Clinical Innovation & Technology. Originating from Detroit, Michigan, she holds a Bachelors in Health Communications from Grand Valley State University.