Electronic symptom monitoring for home-based palliative care: A systematic review

Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Suning Mao (State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases & National Center for Stomatology & National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China)

What is already known about the topic?

• Home-based palliative care has grown in popularity, but challenges in coordinating care and communication between hospital and home settings can impact transitions, healthcare consumption, care quality, and patient safety.
• Electronic symptom monitoring systems in home-based palliative care utilize telemedicine to remotely collect real-time symptom data, offering flexible feedback to patients and healthcare providers during clinical consultations.

What this paper adds?

• Most patients positively engage in electronic symptom monitoring, potentially enhancing quality of life, physical and emotional well-being, and symptom scores without significant cost increase.
• Definitive conclusions regarding the impact of electronic symptom monitoring on outcomes such as survival, hospital admissions, length of stays, emergency visits, and adverse events were constrained by substantial variability in reported data or inadequate statistical power.

Implications for practice, theory, or policy

• Future high-quality randomized controlled trials or large-scale real-world studies on electronic symptom monitoring in home-based palliative care should assess its short-, medium-, and long-term effects on both cancer and non-cancer populations.
• Employing globally recognized patient-reported outcome scales like the EORTC Core Quality of Life Questionnaire and the 36-item Short Form Health Survey guarantees reliable and generalizable results in accurately assessing symptoms and enabling meta-analysis.
• Incorporating electronic symptom monitoring into home-based palliative care should prioritize accessibility, feasibility, and patient acceptance, particularly in uncertain clinical scenarios.

Full paper available from:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02692163241257578?icid=int.sj-abstract.citing-articles.8

If you would like to record a podcast about your published (or accepted) Palliative Medicine paper, please contact Dr Amara Nwosu:

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