The impact of telemedicine on pediatric hospital capacity and resources: a study protocol for systematic review

BackgroundTelemedicine has evolved significantly, demonstrating benefits across various medical fields, including pediatrics. Hospital capacity issues and long distances to reach specialty care are common incentives to use telemedicine. However, current telemedicine research focuses primarily on its effect on clinical outcomes (efficacy) and implementation barriers, leaving capacity outcomes and effectiveness of telemedicine underexplored. This systematic review aims to fill this gap by providing an overview of telemedicines impact on pediatric hospital capacity. MethodsThe PRISMA guidelines will be followed. A systematic literature search through the Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane and Web of Science databases will be conducted. Empirical and modelling studies that evaluate the impact of telemedicine on capacity outcomes in a pediatric, neonatal or perinatal population and hospital setting will be included. Two independent researchers will perform screening, data extraction and quality assessment with the mixed methods appraisal tool. Data will be synthetized qualitatively. The primary outcome will be the impact of telemedicine on capacity outcome measures (following WHO definitions) according to each telemedicine type.