The benefits of telehealth in promoting equity in blood cancer care - results of a multi-stakeholder forum and systematic literature review.

Aims: Therapeutic advancements have significantly improved patient outcomes in blood cancers. However, racial and ethnic disparities persist in treatment and access to care. Telehealth offers a promising solution to these disparities by using electronic and telecommunication technologies to deliver healthcare remotely. Ensuring access to telehealth depends not just on the technologies, but on the broader enabling environment, especially policy harmonization, communications infrastructure, and skills. This paper aims to advocate for the expanded use of telehealth in blood cancer management, highlighting its potential to improve equity and outcomes.

Materials and methods: An expert forum discussion results informed this systematic literature review which was performed to better understand the applied Telehealth solutions and the expected benefits. The forum discussion and the literature review findings were aggregated and reviewed by experts and patient advocates with personal experience in blood cancer.

Results: Our review of the literature yielded 18 relevant papers. Studies included patients from various disease areas; some studies used broader definitions of cancer to include more patients (i.e. acute leukemias and malignant lymphomas), while others were more specific to a particular condition. The identified Telehealth solutions were classified into two groups: solutions focusing on electronic consultation (n = 10) and solutions focusing on a specific intervention to improve patients' health status (n = 8). A larger variety of outcomes were found in these studies, including quality of life, patient and clinicians' acceptance, adherence, costs, and resource use.

Conclusions: Initial findings demonstrate that telehealth can potentially improve patient outcomes for people living with blood cancer, including improved patient quality of life, increased clinician acceptance, better adherence, and reduced costs and resource use to the health system. While evidence for virtual consultations show promising results, further research is needed due to the variety of study settings evaluated in this review. Providers and health systems need additional data on the positive economic impact of Telehealth related to the diagnostic journey and access to treatment.