Research in the first half of 2022

Kristian Kidholm, head of research at CIMT, has identified three key topics from research in digital health technologies in 2022:

• Involving the patients in research is becoming more and more important. Patient involvement ensures that new digital treatments are developed in a way that makes them relevant to the patients and do not increase inequality in healthcare and access to it. In addition, patient involvement ensures that the right outcomes are measured in new studies.
• We must learn from the use of telemedicine during the pandemic. The use of telemedicine increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave us a rapid introduction to both the pros and cons of that kind of patient care. Although most studies show that telemedicine is an effective tool, especially during a pandemic where physical contact must be reduced as much as possible, there are also a number of critical studies that identify potential problems connected with the use of telemedicine.
• Studies of digital health treatment offers should be adjusted to the features of the technology. Studies of digital health technologies in CIMT over the last 8 years have shown us that patient involvement in the design of digital technologies is crucial to the use and effectiveness of the technologies; that the benefits of the technologies are often more than just their impact on quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and that we must therefore include other outcomes, such as the impact on the patient’s empowerment; that we must include assessment of the effects in society in general, such as the impact on patient productivity.

A large number of reviews on the lessons learned of the use of telemedicine during the pandemic can be found in the PUBMED database.