Current developments in delivering customized care: a scoping review

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Health Care Management
• Personalized Medicine

Background:

• Growing interest in personalized medicine and patient-centered care.
• Limited research on implementing and combining these approaches in healthcare delivery.
• Need to understand patient characteristics used for care segmentation and implementation challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a scoping review of customized care articles.
• To identify patient characteristics used for care segmentation.
• To identify challenges in implementing customized interventions in routine care.

Main Methods:

• Searched MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Science Direct, and JSTOR.
• Focused on articles with "care customization", "personalized service and health care", "individualized care", or "targeting population" in title/abstract.
• Followed Prisma guidelines with independent review and consensus for disagreements.

Main Results:

• Identified 70 articles (2008-2019), with most published 2016-2019.
• Four patient characteristic categories for segmentation: clinical, psychosocial, service, and costs.
• Few articles assessed quality, experiences, costs, or defined a conceptual basis for customization.

Conclusions:

• No common theory-based strategy for customized care exists.
• Need to better define segmentation and intervention steps.
• Demonstrate added value, economic viability, and align logics of action for customization.