Evidence for Digital Mental Health Assessment Tools in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Protocol for a Systematic Review on Diagnostic Accuracy Across Age Groups.

Background: Digital assessment tools in health care are increasingly used to aid clinicians in diagnosing mental health conditions. Particularly since the quarantine and isolation guidelines of the COVID-19 pandemic moved much of health care online, there has been an accelerated adoption of digital assessment tools. The diagnostic accuracy of digital mental health assessment tools for a range of psychiatric conditions has yet to be fully explored, especially for their use in populations of older adults and children. Objective: This systematic review aims to (1) summarize recent studies on digital self-report question-and-answer-based mental health assessment tools for use in all ages across a range of psychiatric conditions (eg, the type and number of questions, if available; reference tests; timing; and blinding procedures), (2) present their validity (ie, diagnostic accuracy), and (3) assess study quality and applicability. Methods: The PRISMA-P (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols) guided the development of this protocol. The protocol has been registered with PROSPERO. The searches were guided by the PICO (population, intervention, comparator, and outcome) framework. A systematic search was conducted of the following databases of literature published since 2021: MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Library, ASSIA, Web of Science Core Collection, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. Searches of clinical trial databases and hand searching of reference lists will be completed. Two authors have independently screened titles and abstracts of identified papers and selected studies according to eligibility criteria, resolving inconsistencies through discussion. Full texts were screened following the same process. The authors extracted data using the Covidence data extraction tool (Veritas Health Innovation Ltd; eg, sensitivity and specificity). Two authors will use the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2) tool to assess risk of bias for each full-text inclusion. Results: Scoping for this review began in December 2024. Searches of databases were completed in January 2025. Full-text screening and identification of the relevant gray literature were completed by the end of August 2025, and the final review is expected to be completed by December 2025. Conclusions: The review aims to present the validity and quality of the diagnostic accuracy of digital mental health assessment tools across different ages (including children and older adults), particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic due to the exponential increase in development and use of such tools. This review will provide evidence for the wider deployment of digital mental health assessment tools across a wide age range. There will also be a discussion about future research for digital tools and avenues for policy around digital mental health assessments.