The effectiveness of digital interventions for self-management of chronic pain in employment settings: a systematic review.

Introduction: Chronic pain affects over a quarter of the workforce with high economic burden for individuals, employers and healthcare services. Access to work-related advice for people with chronic pain is variable. This systematic review aims to explore the effectiveness of workplace-delivered digital interventions for the self-management of chronic pain.

Source of data: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Library, JBI, Open Science Framework, Epistemonikos and Google Scholar. Articles published between January 2001 and December 2023 were included. Searches were conducted between October 2023 and December 2023.

Areas of agreement: Workplace-delivered digital interventions to support self-management of chronic pain at work may improve pain and health-related quality of life in vocationally active adults. Delivering interventions outside of clinical services, through the workplace setting, may help to reduce inequity in access to work-related advice for people with chronic pain, and ultimately reduce the burden on individuals, employers and healthcare services. Interventions include mobile apps and web-based programmes.

Areas of controversy: Studies were moderate-to-low quality. Most studies focused on exercise, few considered other aspects of pain self-management. Given the limited evidence in the current literature, consensus on best intervention format and delivery is lacking.

Growing points: More high-quality studies are needed given the heterogeneity in study design, interventions and outcome measures.

Areas timely for developing research: No interventions included advice on work-related adjustments or support. Few studies included work-related outcomes, despite the known impact of pain on work and work on health.