Stimulating Research to Advance Evidence-Based Applications of Telehealth in Occupational Therapy.
Rachel Proffitt, Jana Cason, Lauren Little and 1 others
PMID 33926321WHAT IT FOUND
This paper outlines a research agenda for occupational therapy telehealth.
It identifies four priority areas: assessing in everyday contexts, partnering with caregivers, improving delivery methods, and standardizing data collection. It proposes studies but reports no patient outcomes or evidence of effectiveness.
Key findings
01The workshop identified four overarching themes for future telehealth research: using technology to assess and intervene in everyday contexts, partnerships with caregivers, telehealth delivery, and uniform data collection.
02Access, diversity, and equity issues were identified as threads present throughout all four overarching research themes.
03The group concluded that existing evidence is insufficient to support a guided, systematic approach to occupational therapy telehealth, highlighting a need for frameworks that address session planning and therapeutic interactions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
This is a consensus document from a workshop, not a study of patients. It reports ideas for future research, not results of completed research. The attendees were a selected group of researchers and clinicians, so the agenda may not reflect the views of the broader OT workforce. The paper relies on existing literature and expert opinion to define gaps, rather than primary data collection on practice barriers.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the American Occupational Therapy Foundation (AOTF).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that telehealth occupational therapy is effective or that specific telehealth interventions work. This paper outlines what researchers want to study next; it does not report what they found in patients.