OBJECTIVES: COVID-19 has accelerated the use of digital health, however, there is no universally accepted definition. The objective of this scoping review was to provide an overview of definitions in the literature including the context in which it exists e.g. public health organization, supplier organization, etc. to derive those which are aligned with the ISPOR mission of outcomes research.

METHODS : A literature search was undertaken for the past 5 years (2015-2020) on the major specific terms used in digital health (n=38) where these exist with synonyms of definition as a key term. Databases searched included Embase, PubMed/Medline, Cochrane Library and EconLit. A team of 2 volunteers independently reviewed each abstract to identify those which were likely to contain a definition or taxonomy and then reconciled any misalignment between the authors or referred the abstract to a third-party reviewer. Independent review by 2 volunteers was also employed to extract the relevant parameters in a recording spreadsheet from the full paper review.

RESULTS: From 2966 hits in the four different databases (Embase: n=2263; PubMed: n=657, Cochrane n=35, EconLit: n=11), the scoping review identified 2,610 original abstracts. Fifteen teams of two independent volunteers undertook the review of the abstracts. The agreement between the initial assessments of rater pairs was between 97.1% and 36.2%. Cohen’s kappa ranged from 0.91 to 0.11. A third reviewer reconciled disagreement in 73 (2.8%) citations. The number of abstracts taken through to the full paper review was 545 (20.9%).

CONCLUSIONS: This timely work indicates that definitions included in the literature cover several terms which can be grouped under different applications of digital health. An overview of the different terms and their context to identify options which align with the ISPOR Mission will be presented.