https://www.mdu.se/

mdu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Gray Literature in Evaluating Effectiveness in Digital Health and Health and Welfare Technology: A Source Worth Considering
Mälardalen University.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7222-202X
Mälardalen University, School of Health, Care and Social Welfare, Health and Welfare.
Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Embedded Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5179-7158
Show others and affiliations
2022 (English)In: Journal of Medical Internet Research, E-ISSN 1438-8871, Vol. 24, no 3, article id e29307Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

BACKGROUND: The need to assess the effectiveness and value of interventions involving digital health and health and welfare technologies is becoming increasingly important due to the rapidly growing development of these technologies and their areas of application. Systematic reviews of scientific literature are a mainstay of such assessment, but publications outside the realm of traditional scientific bibliographic databases-known as gray literature-are often not included. This is a disadvantage, particularly apparent in the health and welfare technology (HWT) domain. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is to investigate the significance of gray literature in digital health and HWT when reviewing literature. As an example, the impact of including gray literature to the result of two systematic reviews in HWT is examined. METHODS: In this paper, we identify, discuss, and suggest methods for including gray literature sources when evaluating effectiveness and appropriateness for different review types related to HWT. The analysis also includes established sources, search strategies, documentation, and reporting of searches, as well as bias and credibility assessment. The differences in comparison to scientific bibliographic databases are elucidated. We describe the results, challenges, and benefits of including gray literature in 2 examples of systematic reviews of HWT. RESULTS: In the 2 systematic reviews described in this paper, most included studies came from context-specific gray literature sources. Gray literature contributed to the overall result of the reviews and corresponded well with the reviews' aims. The assessed risk of bias of the included studies derived from gray literature was similar to the included studies from other types of sources. However, because of less standardized publication formats, assessing and extracting data from gray literature studies were more time-consuming and compiling statistical results was not possible. The search process for gray literature required more time and the reproducibility of gray literature searches were less certain due to more unstable publication platforms. CONCLUSIONS: Gray literature is particularly relevant for digital health and HWT but searches need to be conducted systematically and reported transparently. This way gray literature can broaden the range of studies, highlight context specificity, and decrease the publication bias of reviews of effectiveness of HWT. Thus, researchers conducting systematic reviews related to HWT should consider including gray literature based on a systematic approach.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
NLM (Medline) , 2022. Vol. 24, no 3, article id e29307
Keywords [en]
digital health, gray literature, health and welfare technology, information retrieval, article, bibliographic database, comparative effectiveness, documentation, grey literature, human, publication bias, reproducibility, risk assessment, scientific literature, systematic review, welfare
National Category
Health Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-57737DOI: 10.2196/29307ISI: 000789373000001PubMedID: 35319479Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85126847210OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-57737DiVA, id: diva2:1650219
Available from: 2022-04-06 Created: 2022-04-06 Last updated: 2024-01-17Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textPubMedScopus

Authority records

Landerdahl Stridsberg, SaraRichardson, MattEhn, MariaWamala, Sarah

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Landerdahl Stridsberg, SaraRichardson, MattEhn, MariaWamala, Sarah
By organisation
Mälardalen UniversityHealth and WelfareEmbedded Systems
In the same journal
Journal of Medical Internet Research
Health Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn
Total: 190 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf