The use of eHealth with immunizations: An overview of systematic reviews

Highlights

• This article seeks where eHealth technology has had a positive impact on immunization practices.

• An overview of systematic reviews was conducted, resulting in six articles to analyze.

• 4 articles showed benefit, improvement, uptake increase, etc. for using eHealth for immunization.

• Recommend to use eHealth to encourage immunization & increase vaccination adherence & uptake.

• Recommend to continue assessing & documenting the use of eHealth for immunization.

Abstract

Background

eHealth interventions may help increase vaccination uptake and health literacy related to immunization and improve immunization program efficiency.

Objectives

To see where and how eHealth technologies have had a positive impact on immunization practices—using eHealth strategies to increase vaccination uptake, improve immunization program efficiency and advance heath literacy related to immunizations.

Methods

An overview of systematic reviews was conducted, searching PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science for systematic reviews published through August 2017 for eHealth and immunizations (using pre-determined concepts for each). Two independent reviewers selected studies based on a priori criteria; disagreement was resolved by consensus. The quality of the included studies was evaluated using the Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR).

Results

The primary search identified 198 results. After eliminating duplicates 158 remained. Upon applying the a priori set criteria to these, six articles were left to analyze. Four articles showed a positive relationship (a demonstrated benefit, improvement, increase in vaccination uptake, etc. when using eHealth technologies for immunization), one showed a promising relation / with potential, and one showed unknown effects as it focused on the difficulty of analyzing cost-benefits of immunization information systems (IIS).

Conclusion

The review leads to a recommendation of using eHealth technologies to encourage immunizations and increase vaccination adherence and uptake and to continue assessing and documenting the use of eHealth for immunization.