Health Technology In The Management Of Rheumatoid Arthritis – A Systematic Review.

Abstract

Background: Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that prevails in approximately one percent of the global population. RA manifests as joint inflammation, pain, swelling, and stiffness and its management burden disease significantly affects the quality of life, and economic costs. Due to its chronic and continuing nature coupled with the complexity of the disease, its diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation requires the effort of a team of healthcare professionals.

Objective: This systematic review seeks to understand the Health Technology in the enhancement of RA care; including early diagnosis, care and rehabilitation. Wearable technologies, mHealth, telemedicine and artificial intelligence are assessed in terms of how far they can support care pathways.

Methods: A PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase and Scopus was performed to source all research articles reported within the last 10 years. Key terms were ‘’Rheumatoid Arthritis’’, ‘’health technology’’, ‘’diagnosis’’ ‘’management’’ ‘’rehabilitation’’ ‘’telemedicine’’, ‘’mHealth’’, ‘’wearable’’, and ‘’eHealth’’. The eligibility criteria comprised of studies with RA that used health technology; Studies with the health technology were included but those that focused on other conditions apart from RA were Assessment of the bias risk and quality in the data were done utilizing the Cochrane Risk of Bias and the Newcastle Ottawa Scales respectively.

Results: Health technologies contribute to a higher accuracy when diagnosing RA and enhance practical patient care through continuous monitoring and unique customise treatment approaches and exceptional rehabilitation options. Such are the current achievements found in the literature, although there are barriers that include data privacy, user compliance, and integration with healthcare systems.

Conclusion: There is good potential for health technology to significantly redefine the current setting in the RA preventive measures. Coh pioneered, this systematic review lays the background for future progresses for enhancing these technologies to address their current limitations. Due to the description of various elements of RA care, the review contributes to the creation of more effective and efficient care strategies for RA among healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers.