Effects of using patient portals in patient education: A systematic review

Patient education through portals plays a vital role in improving health outcomes of patients. Therefore, this systematic review aimed to investigate the effects of using patient portals on patient education.

This systematic review was conducted by searching keywords in the title, abstract, and keywords of the studies indexed in scientific databases including Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed on March 4, 2024, without any time limitations. The method of data analysis was qualitative.  Data was extracted and the synthesized and results were presented qualitatively.

Eleven studies were finally included. The educational interventions focused on four aspects: self-management, self-care, knowledge improvement, and disease management. Educational approaches were classified into seven categories including text messages, video messages, image messages, e-mail, frequently asked questions, links to educational resources, and YouTube videos. Text messaging was the most common educational approach for delivering educational content through portals. Most (Four) studies dealt with the design of portals for cardiovascular diseases which indicated the effective role of portals for educating this group of patients.

This review showed that educational interventions through patient portals could improve the quality of life related to health, improve knowledge, and facilitate communication with healthcare providers by providing patient self-care recommendations.