Remote Patient Monitoring in Hospital at Home: Bibliometric Analysis of the Field and Scoping Review of Nursing Practice.

AIM: To map the research landscape of remote patient monitoring-enabled hospital at home (RPM-HaH) and delineate the core domains of nursing practice within this care model.

BACKGROUND

RPM-HaH has emerged as a key strategy to alleviate hospital capacity pressures driven by population ageing and rising multimorbidity. Despite its clinical viability, the structural positioning and substantive practice of nursing within this model remain poorly defined.

METHODS

A two-stage integrative design was employed. Stage one involved a bibliometric analysis of literature indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and CINAHL (January 2015-October 2025) to examine publication trends, collaboration networks, journal distributions and keyword co-occurrences. Stage two conducted a scoping review guided by the PRISMA-ScR and SALSA frameworks within this literature body, utilizing thematic synthesis to identify core nursing practice domains.

RESULTS

Across 389 included publications, research output accelerated post-2019, predominantly led by the United States and the United Kingdom. While keyword analysis suggested that nursing-related terms were underrepresented in the RPM-HaH literature, the scoping review identified four core cognitive domains of nursing practice: (1) clinical risk recognition and assessment, (2) data interpretation and meaning-making, (3) prioritization and resource coordination and (4) patient empowerment and safety accountability.

CONCLUSIONS

Bibliometric findings indicate that nursing remains underrepresented despite its operational centrality, likely reflecting research indexing conventions rather than a lack of substantive value. The scoping review also identifies coherent cognitive practice domains that clarify nursing's substantive contributions. These findings collectively demonstrate a structural-substantive mismatch, emphasizing the need for explicitly defined roles, integrated service delivery and theoretically grounded frameworks to inform clinical decision-making in digitally enabled care.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nurse leaders should align competency frameworks with these four cognitive domains while advocating for formal recognition of nursing roles in regulatory standards and quality metrics. Continuing education programmes must expand beyond technical device operation to foster remote clinical reasoning and interprofessional coordination.