Telehealth In Latin America: A Look At The Studies Registered In Clinicaltrials.Gov

Abstract

The characteristics and trends of telehealth research in Latin America, especially randomized controlled clinical trials, have been little explored. The objective of this work was to characterize the studies registered in clinicaltrials.gov on telehealth in Latin America. A descriptive study was carried out where research on telehealth in Latin America registered until 2018 in clinicaltrials.gov was evaluated. The type of study related to disease or topic, country, initiative and type of institution was evaluated. 37 registered jobs were located. Those referring to telehealth were mainly parallel assignment type controlled trials (81.1%). The most addressed diseases were: high blood pressure (23.9%), diabetes (11.3%) and cardiovascular diseases (9.9%). 64.9% of the works were of local initiative, in which Brazil (29.3%) and Argentina (14.6%) were the countries with the highest number of investigations. In conclusion, there is a low number of Latin American studies registered in clinicaltrials.gov, which focused mainly on chronic diseases and were developed by local initiative. More randomized controlled clinical trials on telehealth in the Latin American context are required to help consolidate its development.