Telemedicine in Neurological Disorders: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Introduction:Telemedicine represents an emerging model for the assessment and management of various neurological disorders.Methods:We sought to discuss opportunities and challenges for the integration of telemedicine in the management of common and uncommon neurological disorders by reviewing and appraising studies that evaluate telemedicine as a means to facilitate the access to care, deliver highly specialized visits, diagnostic consultations, rehabilitation, and remote monitoring of neurological disorders.Results:Opportunities for telemedicine in neurological disorders include the replacement of or complement to in-office evaluations, decreased time between follow-up visits, reduction in disparities in access to healthcare, and promotion of education and training through interactions between primary care physicians and tertiary referral centers. Critical challenges include the integration of the systems for data monitoring with an easy-to-use, secure, and cost-effective platform that is both widely adopted by patients and healthcare systems and embraced by international scientific societies.Conclusions:Multiple applications may spawn from a model based on digitalized healthcare services. Integrated efforts from multiple stakeholders will be required to develop an interoperable software platform capable of providing not only a holistic approach to care but also one that reduces disparities in the access to care.

Conflict of interest statement

Martina Chirra: no conflict of interest; Linsdey Wattley: no conflict of interest; Leonard Sokol: no conflict of interest; Elizabeth Keeling: no conflict of interest; Simona Maule: no conflict of interest; Gabriele Sobrero: no conflict of interest; Carlo Alberto Artusi: he has received travel grants for attending courses and congresses from Zambon and Boston Scientific; Alberto Romagnolo: grant support and speaker's honoraria from AbbVie, speaker honoraria from Chiesi Farmaceutici, and travel grants from Lusofarmaco and UCB Pharma; Maurizio Zibetti: he is speaker and has received consulting honoraria from Medtronic, Lundbeck, and AbbVie; Leonardo Lopiano: has received honoraria for advisory board, lecturing and travel grants from AbbVie, UCB, Zambon, Chiesi, Medtronic, Doc, Allergan, and Bial; Alberto J Espay: he has received grant support from the NIH, Great Lakes Neurotechnologies, and the Michael J Fox Foundation; personal compensation as a consultant/scientific advisory board member for Abbvie, TEVA, Impax, Acadia, Acorda, Cynapsus/Sunovion, Lundbeck, and USWorldMeds; publishing royalties from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Cambridge University Press, and Springer; and honoraria from Abbvie, UCB, USWorldMeds, Lundbeck, Acadia, the American Academy of Neurology, and the Movement Disorders Society; Luca Marsili: no conflict of interest; Ahmed Z Obeidat: he is supported by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Grant: #CF-1607-25342; Aristide Merola: he is supported by NIH (KL2 TR001426) and has received speaker honoraria from CSL Behring, Cynapsus Therapeutics, and AbbVie. He has received grant support from Lundbeck and Abbott.

All the coauthors listed above gave their final approval of this article version and agreed to conditions noted on the Authorship Agreement Form.

Figures

Fig. 1.

Flowchart summarizing the results of the searching strategy.

Fig. 2.

Opportunities and challenges for telemedicine in neurological diseases.