Digital health intervention-enabled HIV care retention work practices: a narrative review

The purpose of this narrative review was to synthesise the literature on how Digital Health Interventions (DHIs) enable healthcare providers' HIV care retention-related work practices. A literature search was conducted in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Google Scholar between 1 December 2025 and 10 April 2026. Twenty-nine studies(29) met the inclusion criteria, with publications spanning from 2010 to 2026. Six main categories of DHIs were identified: electronic health/medical records, clinical decision support systems, machine learning predictive models, mobile health (mHealth), patient portals, and telemedicine systems. These interventions supported HIV retention by enabling key work practices, including identifying individuals lost to follow-up, generating lists of clients requiring follow-up, tracing clients lost to follow-up, facilitating communication between healthcare providers and clients, providing online consultations and counselling, enabling access to specialised educational materials, and sending reminders for medication adherence and clinic appointments. The use of DHIs to support HIV retention work practices was associated with improvements in several health outcomes, including increased retention in care, improved adherence to antiretroviral therapy, and higher success rates in tracing clients lost to follow-up. However, different DHIs support different retention work practices and are associated with different retention outcomes. Based on these findings, the review proposes a conceptual framework comprising three integrated components: digital health interventions, retention work practices, and health outcomes, to guide the design and evaluation of DHIs that support HIV retention. The study recommends that digital health interventions that support HIV retention should be evaluated based on how they influence and reshape retention activities and interactions and not solely on issues related to technological innovation and adoption.