Telemedicine and remote monitoring in neuromuscular diseases: Challenges and opportunities

Background: Telemedicine, the application of those information technologies to remotely provide health services either for synchronously catching or asynchronous monitoring patient medical data, has shown a growing and widespread application in several chronic diseases, and, especially during and after COVID-19 pandemics, also in neuromuscular diseases. Objective: this review aims at providing an updated overview on the application of telemedicine and telemonitoring tools in neuromuscular diseases, in clinical practice, research and trials. Methods: a literature search was conducted on PubMed using keywords regarding telemedicine applications and several neuromuscular diseases, including papers up to May 2024. Conclusions: several tools have been developed and tested in myopathies, motoneuron diseases, myasthenia gravis and peripheral neuropathies, providing monitoring, assistance, and rehabilitation protocols for such frail population, for which obtaining real life data remotely can represent a concrete advantage in clinical trials and clinical practice. Although several barriers in the implementation of telemedicine in NMD still need to be overcome, there is evidence for both clinicians and patients showing positive acceptance and satisfaction on the use of remote supports, regarding them as confident outcome measures of quality of life in view of a more general concept of e-health solutions in routine medical care.