Call for papers - Telehealth in palliative care

Guest Editors

Julia I. Bandini, PhD, RAND, USA
Isaac Shin Chua, MD, MPH, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA

Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 17 April 2025

BMC Palliative Care aims to gather cutting-edge research on the use and impact of telehealth in palliative care, focusing on its potential to enhance access to care, improve patient outcomes, and support caregivers. We welcome submissions to this Collection that explore the implementation, effectiveness, and future directions of telehealth interventions in delivering home-based palliative care and addressing the unique needs of palliative care patients.

New Content Item This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities.

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Meet the Guest Editors

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Julia I. Bandini, PhD, RAND, USA

Dr Julia Bandini is a Behavioral/Social Scientist at RAND. Her research centers around care for vulnerable and seriously-ill individuals including palliative care, hospice, and grief and bereavement. She is currently co-PI on a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on understanding patient and caregiver preferences for telehealth and in-person care for outpatient palliative care among underserved patient populations.

Isaac Shin Chua, MD, MPH, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA

Dr Isaac Chua is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a palliative care physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. His research focuses on evaluating and implementing digital health applications (i.e., telehealth and artificial intelligence) to improve palliative care delivery, developing novel quality measures in palliative care, and improving care for seriously ill patients with concurrent substance use disorder. He is being funded by the National Institute on Aging to develop a patient-reported experience measure that measures goal-concordant care among seriously ill older adults with multimorbidity.

About the Collection

Telehealth refers to a broad range of services that include clinical education programs, health information exchange, clinical decision support, and distribution of electronic health records. In palliative care, the use of these digital health interventions and telehealth technologies has the potential to enhance access to palliative care services, improve symptom management, and facilitate better communication amongst patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers via electronic communication.

For example, telehealth can optimize healthcare resource utilization, offering advanced symptom monitoring with management tools and virtual multidisciplinary team consultations, services that are in increased demand in home-based care. Furthermore, ongoing research efforts can lead to the identification of best practices for integrating telehealth into routine palliative care delivery, ensuring equitable access to high-quality care for all patients, regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic status.

Advancing our collective understanding of telehealth in palliative care is crucial for addressing the evolving needs of patients with serious illnesses and for contributing to health equity in this field. Considering this, BMC Palliative Care is opening this Collection on Telehealth in palliative care. We are interested in but not limited to the following topics:

Established and proposed digital health interventions in palliative care
Home-based palliative care through telehealth
Telehealth for outpatients in palliative care
Enhancing communication and support through telehealth
Telepalliative models of care including remote consultations, virtual symptom management, and telemonitoring
Patient and caregiver experience with telehealth interventions
Impact of telehealth on clinical outcomes and quality of care
Cost-effectiveness and resource utilization
Technology integration and innovation tailored in palliative care, such as wearable sensors and mobile apps for symptom tracking
Equity and access based on factors such as geographic location, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and language proficiency, and strategies to promote equitable access

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Telehealth in palliative care" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.