APPENDIX A. Systematic review search strategy Search Algorithm
(telemedicine OR "Mobile Health" OR "Health, Mobile" OR mHealth OR mHealths OR Telehealth OR eHealth) AND (“Cost-Benefit Analysis” OR "Analyses, Cost-Benefit"
OR "Analysis, Cost-Benefit" OR "Cost-Benefit Analyses" OR "Cost Benefit Analysis" OR
"Analyses, Cost Benefit" OR "Analysis, Cost Benefit" OR "Cost Benefit Analyses" OR
"Cost Effectiveness" OR "Effectiveness, Cost" OR "Cost-Benefit Data" OR "Cost Benefit Data" OR "Data, Cost-Benefit" OR "Cost-Utility Analysis" OR "Analyses, Cost-Utility" OR
"Analysis, Cost-Utility" OR "Cost Utility Analysis" OR "Cost-Utility Analyses" OR
"Economic Evaluation" OR "Economic Evaluations" OR "Evaluation, Economic" OR
"Evaluations, Economic" OR "Marginal Analysis" OR "Analyses, Marginal" OR "Analysis, Marginal" OR "Marginal Analyses" OR "Cost Benefit" OR "Costs and Benefits" OR
"Benefits and Costs" OR "Cost-Effectiveness Analysis" OR "Analysis, Cost-Effectiveness"
OR "Cost Effectiveness Analysis"). In addition, the non-MeSH term, “virtual healthcare,”
was also searched.
Search Results
The search returned 238 results and contained literature from a wide variety of study designs, including evaluation studies, randomized controlled trials, reviews, and meta- analyses. An additional seven studies were identified through screening references. The search was limited to studies from January 1, 2010 to July 3, 2016 in order to solely capture the most recent evidence likely to be applicable to the current virtual healthcare
environment. These were further filtered by only English-language articles, relevance to humans, and the existence of an abstract. After removing duplicates, 243 abstracts were read
to determine whether they met our inclusion and exclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria included having a virtual healthcare component and having an economic outcome or cost analysis, as defined by our search algorithm above. The exclusion criteria included studies that were telephone-only, web-based information dissemination-only, and non-U.S.-based population studies. Papers with both a qualifying and non-qualifying component were included in our review. For example, if an intervention included telephone-use with another means of virtual healthcare, the paper was also included.
This process identified 43 abstracts that were read for full-text assessment. Two of the most common reasons studies were further excluded were due to location (i.e. study population outside of the U.S.) and irrelevance to virtual healthcare costs (e.g. intervention was solely web-info based or yielded no economic results). 20 studies remained of which five were based on RCTs, 14 were based on different types of cohort studies, and one was a case series study.
