The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.
The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.
Name of the PSP
Digital technology in adolescents and young persons with IBD
Please describe the scope of the PSP
The aim is to identify the unanswered questions about digital technology for adolescents and young persons with IBD from patient, carer and clinical perspectives and then prioritise those that patients, carers and clinicians agree are the most important for research to address.
The objectives of the PSP are to:
- Work with patients, carers and healthcare professionals to identify uncertainties and unanswered questions about the role of digital technologies to improve care for adolescents and young persons with IBD
- To agree by consensus a prioritised list of those uncertainties, for research;
This PSP looks at digital health technology for the adolescent and young person (up to age 25 years) with IBD. Digital technologies refers to all interventions, tools and services that cover the patient journey (including but not limited to diagnostics, treatment support, monitoring, self-management, participation in research studies, use of transformative approaches such as virtual reality) using information communications technology (including but not limited to mobile phone applications, social media, chat bot, electronic portals) with the intention of improving health and accessibility to patients and/or parents/carers and/or healthcare professionals.
Adolescent and Young Person refers to the period of Adolescence during which there is biological, social, and psychological development. Previous work has clearly demonstrated that the brain undergoes significant structural and functional changes during adolescence, beginning around the onset of puberty and continuing until young people are at least 25 years of age. However, the exact timing and nature of this development is unique to each individual and is influenced by several factors, such as socioeconomic status, peer relationships, and parenting style. Such individual differences mean that two adolescents of the same age are often at different stages in their developmental trajectories; chronological age does not necessarily equate to developmental stage and highlights the need to provide developmentally appropriate healthcare. With this in mind, for the purposes of this PSP, we have chosen to not have a lower age limit to ensure that adolescents of any age (up to age 25 years) who are interested in participating are able to do so.
The PSP will exclude from its scope questions about:
- Technology that is not suitable for an adolescent and young person with IBD.
- Electronic health records or healthcare administrative systems that are used solely by health care professionals.
Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered
We used the summary questions with themes to search literature as specified in the guidebook. We also searched clinical trials databases to identify ongoing trials that might provide evidence for unverified questions in the future.
Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered
Systematic Reviews, review articles, clinical guidelines and recently published RCT’s that may have missed the last systematic review.
Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence
Sources searched - Medline, EMBASE, PsychInfo, Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, Health Evidence, DoPHER, PROSPERO
What search terms did you use?
Population: Crohn’s Disease, ulcerative colitis, Inflammatory bowel disease
Intervention: Search terms that capture Digital technology in the scope ie, diagnostics, treatment support, monitoring, self-management, participation in research studies, virtual reality mobile phone applications, social media, chat box, electronic portals
Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations
Time 2012 to 2022 to capture era of adoption of digital technologies. Ages - School Child (7 to 12 Yrs), Adolescent (13 to 17 Yrs), Adults.
Limited to reviews
Excluded reviews where references other conditions cannot be separated from IBD
Excluded technologies related to diagnostic imaging
Separated search to identify studies that may have been published after the last systematic review
Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking
Sarah Massey, Illingworth Library, Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust for literature search from sources using search terms above
Naila Arebi, Marco Gasparetto and Priya Narula for full text reviews
On what date was the question verification process completed?
March 2023
Any other relevant information
Mental Health PSP created a COPE (Current Overview of Published Evidence) database for the MindTech PSP. This database of published systematic reviews, looking at digital technology for mental health, was the first port of call when checking for uncertainties.
We also searched an existing PSP that covered the topic of IBD to determine research questions that may have previously been raised.