Author Description

Non-professional caregivers are an important source of physical, emotional and other support to ill or injured Veterans. With an increasing number of Veterans who require care and assistance for traumatic brain injuries (TBI), physical impairments, or other debilitating disorders such as post-traumatic stress (PTSD) and dementia, there is a greater growing demand for spouses, parents or other family members and friends to assume the role of caregiver. Electronic health applications and tools are increasingly available and have the potential to facilitate caregiving outside of traditional healthcare settings, especially in the context of the rising use of smartphones and mobile technologies. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) is currently developing mobile applications intended for use by seriously injured post-9/11 Veterans and their family caregivers enrolled in the Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers program. This report was requested on behalf of the VA offices that are developing these mobile tools. The authors conducted searches of multiple databases (MEDLINE (r) via PubMed(r), Embase(r), IEEE Xplore, AMIA Symposium Proceedings, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Conferences, Med 2.0, and Health 2.0) using terms for non-professional caregivers and mobile applications. Reviewers trained in the critical analysis of literature assessed the titles and abstracts for relevance, and retrieved full-text articles for further review. This book is a narrative synthesis of findings, highlighting studies that evaluated the effects on caregiver outcomes, patient outcomes, processes, healthcare utilization and describe the common characteristics and themes that emerged across studies and disease categorie