How is digital technology used to facilitate shared decision-making between healthcare professionals and patients in cardiovascular care? A scoping review

Abstract

Introduction Shared decision-making (SDM) is a patient-centred approach in healthcare that emphasizes patient involvement in the decision-making process. Digital technologies (DTs), like Mobile apps and website tools, are on the rise in cardiovascular care (CVC) and healthcare in general. But DTs can play a role in facilitating SDM, for example, with tools such as decision aids (DAs) for patients and quality check frameworks for Health care professionals (HCPs). The aim of this scoping review (ScR) was to identify the types of DTs used to facilitate SDM within the field of CVC and the analysis of how support for SDM is implemented in these technologies; to examine the conceptualizations of SDM utilized in DTs and determine the theories underlying these conceptualizations within the field of CVC; and to present designs, methods, and outcomes of published evaluation studies concerning DTs for SDM within the field of CVC. Methods For this scoping review (ScR), ten databases were searched: eight biomedical and two technical databases between January 2022 and March 2022. After deduplicating the literature, the screening was conducted by the author and was independently double-screened by one of the four contributors. The selected articles were then analysed by the author on SDM and DT. Results From the initial 5719 search results, finished on the 6th of March 2023. 48 articles were included in this ScR. The PRISMA flow diagram is presented in Figure 1. All 48 articles were included after the screening report on one of the 31 applications selected in this ScR. The characteristics of the DTs of the applications were analysed as presented in Table 1. The SDM was all about treatment options, except only one application was on screening tests. Only one application made a direct reference to an SDM model, all the others hat references to literature Defining and explaining SDM. There is an ambiguous outcome of significance in the reported evaluative studies of these applications. making it important to evaluate which characteristics of DTs are efficacious in the variability of the clinical setting. Conclusion There has been an increase in DTs to facilitate SDM in CVC over the past years. Within the scientific literature, there is recognition of a variety of DT characteristics and outcomes of the evaluative studies. It is important to reflect users' needs to choose the right application. It is valuable for developers to see which characteristics of DTs add value to applications.Table 1.Characteristics of DTs