Abstract
Patients forget up to 80% of information conveyed during medical consultations. While clinicians may provide hand-written notes to patients during in-person appointments, such opportunities are limited in telehealth. Palliative care patients with complex information needs may benefit from consultation summaries. We developed a consultation summary application (CSA) to generate patient-facing summaries during video telehealth, in a palliative care context. Traditional research methods fall short in early identification and resolution of socio-technical factors, e.g., workflow compatibility, which impact the adoption of digital health innovations. Drawing on the Service Readiness Level Framework, we adopted a phased approach to generating evidence for the CSA. We conducted clinical simulations with seven clinician-simulated patient dyads involving the metastatic lung cancer scenario to examine and address usability and workflow integration issues prior to real-world implementation. Both clinicians and simulated patients perceived the CSA as a valuable tool to support palliative care patients with information recall and self-management. We recommend clinical simulation to de-risk real-world deployment, and optimise the digital health innovations.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre Limited (DHCRC), Monash University, Healthdirect Australia, Monash Health, University of Melbourne, and the Victorian Department of Health. DHCRC is funded under the Commonwealth Government Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program. The project described in this paper is supported by the Digital Health Validitron, a collaborative and interdisciplinary research group that assists digital health innovators from healthcare, academia and industry to accelerate the creation of evidence that proves the real-world value of their ideas and products. We acknowledge Gary Wong and Mady Mani who support the technical team within the Validitron. We also acknowledge all our research participants who generously contributed their time towards this research. We also thank A/Prof Daniel Capurro and Dr Omar Dabash for their assistance with clinical simulation rehearsals.
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T.O.B.—Conceptualisation, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing. K.H.—Conceptualisation, investigation, methodology, software, supervision, validation, writing – review & editing. O.M.—Conceptualisation, investigation, methodology, supervision, validation, writing—review & editing. W.C.—Conceptualisation, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, supervision, validation, writing—review & editing. H.F.—Data curation, investigation. R.H.—Conceptualisation, funding acquisition, software, supervision, validation, writing – review & editing. P.P.—Conceptualisation, funding acquisition, supervision, validation, writing – review & editing. A.L.—Software, investigation. X.C.—Software. L.B.—Writing—review & editing. I.H.—Writing—review & editing. E.T.—Writing—review & editing. C.B.—Conceptualisation, funding acquisition, writing—review & editing. S.G.—Conceptualisation, funding acquisition, software. M.K.—Conceptualisation, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, supervision, validation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing.
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O’Brien, T., Huckvale, K., Metcalf, O. et al. Using clinical simulation to evaluate a video telehealth consultation summary application. npj Digit. Med. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-02506-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-02506-8
