A Narrative Review on Mobile Health (mHealth) App for Stroke Care and Rehabilitation Intervention for Malaysia

Abstract

The 2019 COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant challenges in global healthcare. In Malaysia, limitations in stroke care and the lack of digital interventions highlighted gaps in supporting the stroke community, increasing caregiver burdens and undermining the nation’s stroke care system. The study is conducted to explore evidences about the digital health in stroke care and rehabilitation, especially for home-based care in Malaysia, including the current status and the availability of intervention modules. The literature search for this narrative review was conducted across databases such as PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and others. Approximately 250 articles were identified through a combination of database searches and manual selection using keywords such as “stroke rehabilitation,” “digital health,” “mHealth,” “caregiver burden,” and “Malaysia”. After screening 127 articles based on their titles and abstracts, 80 full-text articles were assessed for relevance to the review’s inclusion criteria. Ultimately, 58 studies (research articles and website sources) were included in the final review, focusing on stroke rehabilitation, caregiver burden, and digital health interventions, particularly mobile health (mHealth) solutions. The results are presented in summative paragraphs of reviews complementing subtopics in order to reach final conclusion and future directions. The subtopics are: i) Understanding stroke and caregiver’s burden; ii) Stroke in global digital health; iii) Stroke intervention modules for web-based and smartphone applications; and iv) Malaysia, mobile health (mHealth) and stroke intervention module. Evidence suggests that Malaysia still falls short in meeting the needs of the stroke community, and that stroke care must be made available through digital means.