Virtual Care for Indigenous Populations in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand: Protocol for a Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: Indigenous people in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand experience an increased burden of chronic diseases compared to non-Indigenous people in these countries. Lack of necessary services and culturally relevant care for Indigenous people contributes to this burden. Many Indigenous communities have implemented systems, such as virtual care, to improve chronic disease management. Virtual care has extended beyond videoconferencing to include more advanced technologies, such as remote biometric monitoring devices. However, given the historical and ongoing Western intrusion into Indigenous day to day life, these technologies may seem more invasive and thus require additional research on their acceptability and utility within Indigenous populations. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this paper is to present the protocol for a scoping review, which aims to map existing evidence. This study is based on the following guiding research question: What are the characteristics of virtual care use by Indigenous adult populations in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand? The subquestions are related to the technology used, health conditions and nature of the virtual care, cultural safety, and key concepts for effective use. METHODS: This scoping review protocol is informed by the methodology described by the Joanna Briggs Institute and is supplemented by the frameworks proposed by Arksey and O’Malley and Levac et al. A search for published and gray literature, written in English, and published between 2000 and present will be completed utilizing electronic databases and search engines, including MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, Indigenous Peoples of North America, Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, Informit, and Native Health Database. Search results will be uploaded to the review software, Covidence, for title and abstract screening before full-text screening begins. This process will be repeated for gray literature. Upon completion, a data abstraction tool will organize the relevant information into categorical formations. RESULTS: The search strategy has been confirmed, and the screening of titles and abstracts is underway. As of October 2020, we have identified over 300 articles for full-text screening. CONCLUSIONS: Previous reviews have addressed virtual care within Indigenous communities. However, new virtual care technologies have since emerged; subsequently, additional literature has been published. Mapping and synthesizing this literature will inform new directions for research and discussion. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/21860