Key result
Integrated digital health interventions reduce CVD events by ~26% vs usual care, but not mortality.
Why the study?
The effectiveness of digital health interventions supporting care integration in improving health outcomes for patients with CAD compared to usual care required assessment.
Do digital health interventions supporting care integration reduce all-cause mortality, readmissions, and CVD events in patients with coronary artery disease compared to usual care?
Meta-Analysis (n=23,111)
Do digital health interventions supporting care integration reduce all-cause mortality, readmissions, and CVD events in patients with coronary artery disease compared to usual care?
Odds Ratio: 0.74 (95% CI 0.59–0.92)
p-value: p=0.02
Digital health interventions supporting care integration in patients with coronary artery disease are associated with significantly lower odds of cardiovascular events compared to usual care, though they did not significantly reduce all-cause mortality or readmissions.
Supports adoption of care-integrating DHIs to lower CVD events; strengthens meta-analytic evidence for digital interventions in prevention.
Structured Abstract Aim To assess the effectiveness of digital health interventions (DHIs) supporting care integration for coronary artery disease (CAD) in improving health outcomes compared to usual care. Methods For this systematic review, we searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, EBSCO Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection, Scopus, and Web of Science from 1 January 1995 to 5 November 2025. We included studies reporting primary data on DHIs supporting care integration for patients with CAD. Primary endpoints were all-cause mortality and readmissions, and CVD events. Secondary endpoints were the control of cardiovascular risk factors. We conducted random-effects meta-analyses in RevMan and assessed risk of bias with Cochrane’s RoB tools. Results We included 72 studies (23,111 participants), assessing 45 in the meta-analysis. All DHIs supported person-centred care integration (n=72) while few DHIs addressed clinical care integration (n=22), professional integration (n=12) and functional integration (n=22). Compared to usual care, DHIs supporting care integration had significant reductions in the odds of CVD events (OR: 0.74 [0.59, 0.92], df=5, p=0.02), but not in all-cause mortality or readmissions. Conclusions Although this review shows that DHIs supporting care integration were associated with reduced CVD events compared to usual care, the current evidence remains concentrated primarily on person-centred care integration, with limited studies evaluating broader dimensions of care integration at organisational and systemic levels. These findings highlight the important evidence gaps of DHIs in supporting more comprehensive and system-level integration in cardiovascular care. Further research is necessary to understand the influence of DHI modality and function on effectiveness of care integration.
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Chan et al. (2026) conducted a meta-analysis in Coronary artery disease (n=23,111). Digital health interventions supporting care integration vs. Usual care was evaluated on All-cause mortality, readmissions, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events (OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.59-0.92, p=0.02). Digital health interventions supporting care integration reduced the odds of CVD events compared to usual care (OR 0.74; 95% CI 0.59-0.92; p=0.02), but not mortality or readmissions.
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