Health Technologies and Infrastructures for Supporting Home-Based Pediatric Palliative Care: Scoping Review

Families with children who need pediatric palliative care (PPC) often stay at home to preserve a sense of normalcy. However, families may experience challenges regarding communication and follow-up from health care professionals (HCPs). Health technology is suggested as a way to facilitate communication between families and HCPs, but no previous scoping review has mapped existing studies on health and communication technologies and infrastructures for supporting children who need PPC and their families.

The objective of this scoping review was to systematically map the literature on health technologies and infrastructures to support communication in home-based PPC.

We conducted a scoping review based on Arksey and O'Malley's framework with a systematic search for relevant publications in the ASSIA, CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases in November 2023, updated on August 28, 2025. Eligible publications comprised children (aged 0-18 years) with life-limiting or life-threating conditions requiring PPC and their families; HCPs, social care workers, or teachers caring for children in need of PPC and using any health technologies and infrastructures to support 2-way communication in home-based care; and literature published between January 1, 2018, and August 28, 2025, in Danish, English, Norwegian, or Swedish. Pairs of authors independently assessed eligibility and extracted data, which were summarized using a descriptive approach.

This review included 41 publications: 20 empirical papers, 6 protocol papers, 7 abstracts, 3 brief publications, 2 review papers, and 3 case publications. In 29.3% (12/41) of the publications, the researchers applied user-centered phased-design approaches to develop health technology for PPC. Children with cancer were most often studied in the publications. The most frequent delivery of health technology for communication in home-based PPC combined asynchronous and synchronous modes (19/41, 46.3%). Furthermore, the most frequent health technology apps for communication in home-based care were symptom monitoring apps (15/41, 36.6%), video technology (8/41, 19.5%), and health monitoring and video technology (3/41, 7.3%). Smartphones (14/41, 36.6%), internet and Wi-Fi (12/41, 29.3%), computers or laptops (9/41, 22%), and tablets (9/41, 22%) were the most frequently reported infrastructures.

Children with cancer and their families are the most frequently reported users of health technology for communicating with HCPs in home-based PPC. However, research on children with diagnoses other than cancer and their families is limited. Combining asynchronous and synchronous modes is the most frequent way to deliver health technology, and children and their families often communicate with HCPs using symptom monitoring apps. Reports of health technology infrastructure for home-based PPC were insufficiently accounted for. Future studies should strive to include the voices of children in the development of health technology to align more closely with their needs.

Open Science Framework t9h4c; https://osf.io/t9h4c/.