Web-based interventions on the clinical encounter in fertility care: a scoping review

New E-health initiatives have been developed massively, including interventions supporting the interaction between patients and healthcare professionals, known as the clinical encounter. This interaction can influence clinical decision making during a patients’ workup or treatment process.This scoping review was designed to (1) display the current landscape of web-based interventions to support the clinical encounter and (2) to critically appraise their composition.A literature search was conducted in different electronic databases. The study interventions were for infertile patients and internet based, including the clinical encounter. The selected studies were systematically appraised. Twenty-eight studies were included and divided into four categories: online platform (10 studies), telemonitoring (3 studies), teleconsulting (8 studies) and artificial intelligence (7 studies). The online platform and teleconsulting categories focused most on patient reported outcomes, with positive results. The other categories focused on development and validation. In conclusion, this review shows a broad landscape of web-based interventions on the clinical encounter, for healthcare professionals and fertility patients. The teleconsulting and the online platform categories have are the most ‘ready to use’ interventions. However, in only four studies the actual implementation of the interventions was evaluated, suggesting challenges with implementation research and the need for standardized implementation protocols.