Digital health technology for delivering care to cancer patients in rural settings
Citation: Morris BB, Rossi B, Fuemmeler B. The role of digital health technology in rural cancer care delivery: A systematic review. The Journal of Rural Health. 2022;38(3):493-511.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: National Cancer Institute (USA).
What is this? Digital health technologies can help to increase access to care for cancer patients living in rural areas, helping to make health systems resilient.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of the use of digital technology for cancer-related health care in rural settings. They restricted their searches to articles published in English after January 2009 and did their search in July 2021. They included 54 studies, which were conducted in Australia (17 studies), Canada (3), Italy (1), Russia (1), Scotland (1), UK (2) and USA (30).
What was found: In general, rural cancer survivors value the use of digital technologies to receive cancer care.
Telemedicine was the most frequently technology considered among the included studies and was found to be feasible, acceptable and able to improve patient outcomes and access to cancer care for people living in rural areas.
Telephone-based interventions helped patients to lose weight and improved patient outcomes in palliative care.
Internet-based digital health appeared to be a useful approach to improve cancer care access but was dependent on challenges related to the availability of internet infrastructure and device requirements among rural communities.
Implications: The authors of the review concluded that further implementation and expansion of telemedicine and telephone-based strategies in the delivery of cancer care in rural settings is warranted. They stated that more studies are needed to evaluate and understand the role of health technologies to improve access to rural cancer care.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of geographic or rural residences with lower density of cancer specialists.
This summary was prepared by Nhi Luu, checked by Yasmeen Saeed and Cristián Mansilla, and finalized by Mike Clarke.