Current developments in delivering customized care: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: In recent years, there has been a growing interest in health care personalization and customization (i.e. personalized medicine and patient-centered care). While some positive impacts of these approaches have been reported, there has been a dearth of research on how these approaches are implemented and combined for health care delivery systems. The present study undertakes a scoping review of articles on customized care to describe which patient characteristics are used for segmenting care, and to identify the challenges face to implement customized intervention in routine care. METHODS: Article searches were initially conducted in November 2018, and updated in January 2019 and March 2019, according to Prisma guidelines. Two investigators independently searched MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Science Direct and JSTOR, The search was focused on articles that included “care customization”, “personalized service and health care”, individualized care” and “targeting population” in the title or abstract. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined. Disagreements on study selection and data extraction were resolved by consensus and discussion between two reviewers. RESULTS: We identified 70 articles published between 2008 and 2019. Most of the articles (n = 43) were published from 2016 to 2019. Four categories of patient characteristics used for segmentation analysis emerged: clinical, psychosocial, service and costs. We observed these characteristics often coexisted with the most commonly described combinations, namely clinical, psychosocial and service. A small number of articles (n = 18) reported assessments on quality of care, experiences and costs. Finally, few articles (n = 6) formally defined a conceptual basis related to mass customization, whereas only half of articles used existing theories to guide their analysis or interpretation. CONCLUSIONS: There is no common theory based strategy for providing customized care. In response, we have highlighted three areas for researchers and managers to advance the customization in health care delivery systems: better define the content of the segmentation analysis and the intervention steps, demonstrate its added value, in particular its economic viability, and align the logics of action that underpin current efforts of customization. These steps would allow them to use customization to reduce costs and improve quality of care.