Telemedicine in the Clinical Care of Neglected Tropical Diseases: A Scoping Review

Background: The Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) represent a global public health problem. Telemedicine uses telecommunications to deliver remote healthcare services when patients and providers are separated by distance. Using digital health technologies to offer medical care remotely to NTDs can be an important strategy for reducing inequalities in access but is challenging in low-and middle-income settings. The objective of the current review was to identify and summarize international evidence on the use of telemedicine for clinical care of patients with NTDs around the world based on a scoping review protocol. Methodology/Principal Findings: A total of 422 articles were extracted from the databases MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus, and after removing 129 duplicates, 285 studies were excluded because they did not meet the eligibility criteria. A total of 8 articles were included for data extraction, half of them published after 2021 (n=4). Four studies were focused on dermatological diseases, like leprosy and leishmaniasis, and the other diseases found were dengue (n=2), trachoma (n=1) and cysticercosis (n=1). Most telemedicine interventions in NTDs involved Primary Health Care teams (n=5). Studies that evaluated the accuracy of remote diagnosis demonstrated good effectiveness for leprosy, trachoma and complications of neurocysticercosis. There was a reduction in the need for specialized in-person medical consultations with telemedicine for the care of dengue fever and some dermatological NTDs; and an improvement in the quality of clinical monitoring of cutaneous leishmaniasis using mobile health was demonstrated. Conclusions/Significance: Although we observed a small recent increase in academic research on the theme, there is a gap in recommendations for the clinical management of NTDs through telemedicine in the literature. The feasibility and potential for telemedicine-based NTDs diagnosis and treatment have been demonstrated in only a few settings/countries, revealing that this resource is still largely underutilized. Author Summary: Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) represent a global public health problem with great socioeconomic impact. Using digital health technologies to provide medical care remotely can be an important strategy for reducing inequalities. The objective of this scoping review was to identify and summarize international evidence on the use of telemedicine in the clinical care of patients with NTDs. A total of 8 articles were included for data collection as they met all our search criteria, half of them published after 2021 (n=4). Most telemedicine interventions in NTDs involved Primary Health Care teams (n=5). Studies that evaluated the accuracy of remote diagnosis demonstrated good effectiveness for leprosy, trachoma and complications of neurocysticercosis. There was a reduction in the need for specialized face-to-face medical consultations with telemedicine to treat dengue fever and some dermatological NTDs, and an improvement in the quality of clinical monitoring of cutaneous leishmaniasis through mobile health was reported. Although we have seen a recent small increase in academic research on the topic, there is a gap in recommendations for the clinical management of NTDs through telemedicine in literature, revealing that this resource is still largely underutilized.