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. 2013 Jul;3(3):120-4.
doi: 10.1177/1941874413483754.

Systematic review of teleneurology: neurohospitalist neurology

Mark N Rubin  1 , Kay E Wellik, Dwight D Channer, Bart M Demaerschalk
Affiliations

Systematic review of teleneurology: neurohospitalist neurology

Mark N Rubin et al. Neurohospitalist. 2013 Jul.

Abstract

The use of 2-way audiovisual telemedicine technology for the delivery of acute stroke care is well established in the literature and is a growing practice. The use of such technology for neurologic consultation outside the cerebrovascular specialty has been reported to a variable extent across most disciplines within the field of neurology, including that of the neurohospitalist medicine. A systematic review of these reports is lacking. Hence, the main purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature on teleneurologic consultation in hospital neurology. The databases Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsychINFO, CINAHL, and Cochrane were used as data sources and were searched with key words "teleneurology" and its numerous synonyms and cognates. These key words were cross-referenced with subspecialties of neurology. The studies were included for further review only if the title or the abstract indicated that the study made use of 2-way audiovisual communication to address a neurologic indication. This search yielded 6625 abstracts. By consensus between the 2 investigators, 688 publications met the criteria for inclusion and further review. Four of those citations directly pertained to the inpatient hospital neurologic consultation. Each of the 4 relevant articles was scored with a novel rubric scoring functionality, application, technology, and evaluation phase. A subspecialty category score was calculated by averaging those scores. The use of 2-way audiovisual technology for general neurologic consultation of hospital inpatients, beyond stroke-related care, is promising, but the evidence supporting its routine use is weak. Further studies on reliability, validity, safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness are encouraged.

Keywords: clinical specialty; neurohospitalist; quality; remote consultation; safety; techniques; teleneurology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: Bart Demaerschalk has served in the past as a consultant to Genentech and REACH and currently serves on an advisory board for Cell Trust. The other authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The FATE rubric is a novel method of assessing the telemedical literature for the presence of salient elements including functionality, application, technology, and phase of evaluation. Scores are assigned based on the number of “yes” answers in the “functionality” section and the phase of evaluation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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