The impact of telemedicine on pediatric hospital capacity and resources: a study protocol for systematic review

Background: Telemedicine has evolved significantly, demonstrating benefits across various medical fields, including pediatrics. Hospital capacity issues and long distances to reach specialty care are common incentives to use telemedicine. However, current telemedicine research focuses primarily on its effect on clinical outcomes (efficacy) and implementation barriers, leaving capacity outcomes and effectiveness of telemedicine underexplored. This systematic review aims to fill this gap by providing an overview of telemedicine's impact on pediatric hospital capacity. Methods: The PRISMA guidelines will be followed. A systematic literature search through the Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane and Web of Science databases will be conducted. Empirical and modelling studies that evaluate the impact of telemedicine on capacity outcomes in a pediatric, neonatal or perinatal population and hospital setting will be included. Two independent researchers will perform screening, data extraction and quality assessment with the mixed methods appraisal tool. Data will be synthetized qualitatively. The primary outcome will be the impact of telemedicine on capacity outcome measures (following WHO definitions) according to each telemedicine type. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study did not receive any funding, but was supported by Convergence | Healthy Start, a program of the Convergence Alliance (Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus Medical Center) to improve the future of new generations. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors