Book Overview
The purpose of this project was to conduct a systematic review of scientific literature published between January 1, 2013, and May 31, 2021, regarding the influence of telemedicine applications on the long-term health benefits, asthma self-management education, and patient satisfaction of inner-city, underserved adults (18 to 55 years old) who have asthma. Although other systematic reviews involving asthmatic adults have been published (Wainwright & Wootton, 2003; Zhao et al., 2015), they mostly focus on the effectiveness of telemedicine at controlling asthma symptoms rather than on the long-term health benefits that telemedicine can yield. In addition, no published systematic review has explicitly addressed the impacts of telemedicine on underserved adult populations. Given that people from minority and underserved populations tend to suffer disproportionately from asthma (CDC, 2020; John et al., 2017) and from lack of access to health care (Veen et al., 2019), understanding how telemedicine influences the long-term health of asthma patients, as well as morbidity and mortality rates, in these subpopulations is particularly important. Therefore, the main objective of this project was to synthesize the published literature to reveal whether telemedicine improves long-term health outcomes and decreases morbidity and mortality rates in inner-city adult asthmatics. An additional goal was to enhance healthcare practitioners’ awareness of the benefits of telemedicine by providing a comprehensive overview of the data regarding the effectiveness of telemedicine and asthma treatment in underserved populations.
This systematic review included studies published between 2013 and 2021 and that used quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches. Chapter 1 provides background information for the present project. The contents describe the significance of the study and the important implications of using telemedicine with asthmatic patients. In addition, Chapter 1 outlines the project’s purpose and research questions. Chapter 2 provide a synthesis of the literature regarding the use of telemedicine in asthmatic populations.