Background: The integration of digital applications within
health care is called blended care.
Introduction: Despite its potential, physiotherapists experience
difficulty in determining which patients are suitable for blended
care. This study aimed to develop a checklist to support physiotherapists
while setting up a blended treatment. Therefore, we
aimed to investigate which patient characteristics predict patients’
suitability for blended physiotherapy and which patient
characteristics need to be taken into account while determining
the ratio between therapeutic guidance and a digital application.
Methods: A scoping review was conducted consisting of (1)
literature search in PubMed and PEDro up to December 2017:
studies were eligible if they focused on blended physiotherapy
consisting of contact at least twice with a physiotherapist
complemented by a digital application, and characteristics
related to patients’ suitability for blended physiotherapy were
extracted and categorized in themes; (2) a checklist item for
each theme formulated by the authors, which resulted in a
first version of the Dutch Blended Physiotherapy Checklist;
and (3) expert opinion and feedback on clinical relevance by
six experts. The checklist was adapted accordingly.
Results: The final Dutch Blended Physiotherapy Checklist consists
of eight items: motivation, safety, equipment, digital skills,
health literacy, self-management, time, and financial factors.
Discussion: The next step is to investigate the feasibility and
predictive validity of the checklist, that is, whether this
checklist is actually able to predict patients’ suitability for
blended physiotherapy.
Conclusions: This study provides the final version of the
Dutch Blended Physiotherapy Checklist, which is supposed
to guide physiotherapists in their clinical reasoning process
while setting up a personalized, blended physiotherapy
treatment.
