A Scoping Review of Telehealth Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder
PLoS One
Stavropoulos, K. K., Bolourian, Y., et al. (2022).
PLoS One, 17(2), e0263062.
This systematic review investigates the validity and feasibility of remote assessment (e.g., telehealth, telepractice) for evaluating and diagnosing autism in individuals.
No funding received
From database inception to June 3, 2021
Original, published, peer-reviewed, empirical studies on diagnostic assessment. Excludes reviews, meta-analyses, proposals, and studies in languages other than English.
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<div>Assessment conducted via telepractice demonstrates comparable accuracy to in-person diagnosis accuracy (80-91%) for individuals on the autism spectrum. Studies found acceptable levels of sensitivity (75-100%) and specificity (68.5-100%). Care providers and clinicians reported acceptable satisfaction ratings indicating social validity and feasibility. Reported benefits of remote assessment include flexibility, ability to see an individual in their "natural" environment, and cost-savings. Reported barriers of remote assessment include variability in how observational video is collected and provided to clinicians (e.g., store and forward, live interactions with coaching), standardized protocol tasks requiring adaptations, and technology issues. The authors note limitations such as only including published, English-language research as well as the limited number of studies investigating diagnosis of adults and the limited racial and ethnic diversity of participants of the included studies. Additional research on the use of telepractice for assessing and diagnosing autism is warranted.</div>
