Telehealth in Cystic Fibrosis. A systematic review incorporating a novel scoring system and expert weighting to identify a 'top 10 manuscripts' to inform future best practices implementation

Abstract

The ongoing development and integration of telehealth within CF care has been accelerated in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with many centres publishing their experiences. Now, as the restrictions of the pandemic ease, the use of telehealth appears to be waning, with many centres returning to routine traditional face-to-face services. For most, telehealth is not integrated into clinical care models, and there is a lack of guidance on how to integrate such a service into clinical care. The aims of this systematic review were to first identify manuscripts which may inform best CF telehealth practices, and second, to analyse these finding to determine how the CF community may use telehealth to improve care for patients, families, and Multidisciplinary Teams into the future. To achieve this, the PRISMA review methodology was utilised, in combination with a modified novel scoring system that consolidates expert weighting from key CF stakeholders, allowing for the manuscripts to be placed in a hierarchy in accordance with their scientific robustness. From the 39 found manuscripts, the top ten are presented and further analysed. The top ten manuscripts are exemplars of where telehealth is used effectively within CF care at this time, and demonstrate specific use cases of its potential best practices. However, there is a lack of guidance for implementation and clinical decision making, which remains an area for improvement. Thus, it is suggested that further work explores and provides guidance for standardised implementation into CF clinical practice.

Keywords: Best practices; Cystic fibrosis; Expert weighting; Guidance; Novel scoring; Telehealth.

Fig. 1

PRISMA Flowchart of manuscript selection.

Fig. 2

A summary of the top ten manuscripts.