Inequities in Health Care Services Caused by the Adoption of Digital Health Technologies: Scoping Review

作者：Rui Yao, Wenli Zhang, Richard Evans, Guang Cao, Tianqi Rui, Lining Shen · 发表于：Journal of Medical Internet Research · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.2196/34144 · 被引用次数：457 · 研究领域：Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation、Mobile Health and mHealth Applications、Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education

BACKGROUND: Digital health technologies (ie, the integration of digital technology and health information) aim to increase the efficiency of health care delivery; they are rapidly adapting to health care contexts to provide improved medical services for citizens. However, contrary to expectations, their rapid adoption appears to have led to health inequities, with differences in health conditions or inequality in the distribution of health care resources among different populations. OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aims to identify and describe the inequities of health care services brought about by the adoption of digital health technologies. The factors influencing such inequities, as well as the corresponding countermeasures to ensure health equity among different groups of citizens, were also studied. METHODS: Primary studies and literature, including articles and reviews, published in English between 1990 and 2020 were retrieved using appropriate search strategies across the following three electronic databases: Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus. Data management was performed by two authors (RY and WZ) using Thomson Endnote (Clarivate Analytics, Inc), by systematically screening and identifying eligible articles for this study. Any conflicts of opinion were resolved through discussions with the corresponding author. A qualitative descriptive synthesis was performed to determine the outcomes of this scoping review. RESULTS: A total of 2325 studies were...