ReviewJournal of family medicine and primary care2025
Overview of barriers to healthcare access: Medical deserts and individual sandboxes.
Review in Journal of family medicine and primary care, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This mini-review examines review studies on barriers to healthcare access in "medical deserts"-regions with limited healthcare resources-and "individual sandboxes," personal or societal factors preventing care-seeking. Relevant reviews published after 2010 were included, identified through a search on PubMed. The selection resulted in a sample of 18 review studies. An overview of the review studies was conducted, thematically analyzed, and subsequently placed within a context of eHealth with a question, how can eHealth services solve the challenges, in what are called here, medical deserts and individual sandboxes. The data revealed geographical, individual, and resource-based barriers to healthcare access. In the context of eHealth solutions, their potential is particularly recognized in primary care, mental health, and culturally sensitive settings. For medical deserts, in addition to staff-attracting strategies such as incentives for healthcare workers, telemedicine solutions and AI-driven scheduling can improve service availability. In individual sandboxes, eHealth has a unique advantage in reducing participation barriers and addressing cultural needs, thereby enhancing healthcare inclusivity and accessibility. eHealth solutions hold significant promise in regular consultations and psychotherapy, as well as in addressing the healthcare needs of multicultural and diverse populations. AI assistance, then, offers significant potential to enhance the effectiveness of healthcare service provision in medical deserts, contingent upon financial feasibility. However, for these solutions to be effective, healthcare staff must receive education and training on how to integrate and utilize new-generation technologies in their daily practices, ensuring that they can fully develop and optimize their work.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.