Effectiveness of digital health interventions for asthma management: an umbrella review protocol.
Abstract
The objective of this review will be to comprehensively synthesize evidence from systematic reviews examining the effectiveness of digital health interventions (DHIs) compared with usual care or non-digital interventions for improving clinical health outcomes in patients with asthma of all ages. Asthma affects 262 million people worldwide, with a substantial morbidity, mortality, and economic burden. Despite effective treatments, control remains suboptimal due to poor medication adherence and barriers to traditional face-to-face care. DHIs offer various solutions; however, heterogeneous findings across systematic reviews necessitate synthesis to clarify the most effective interventions. Patients of any age diagnosed with asthma will be included. Eligible interventions will be consumer-focused DHIs (including smartphone applications, telehealth, electronic monitoring devices, web-based platforms, messaging services, and smart inhalers) compared with usual care, non-digital interventions, or other digital modalities. The primary outcome will be asthma control; secondary outcomes will be quality of life, medication adherence and health care utilization. Factors influencing engagement and adverse events will be reported. There will be no language restrictions. This review will follow the JBI methodology for umbrella reviews. Systematic searches will be conducted in MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, CINAHL Ultimate (EBSCOhost), and JBI Best Practice (Ovid), with PEDro as a supplementary source. Two reviewers will independently conduct study selection, critical appraisal, and data extraction using standardized JBI forms. The findings will be narratively synthesized with tabular summaries, as well as a citation matrix analysis for overlap assessment and visual representations. Certainty of evidence will be rated using GRADE. CRD420251247228 (PROSPERO).
Abstract as supplied by the indexing source. © the authors / publisher.