A systematic review of the use of telehealth in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences Authors: DANIELA REGINA MOLINI AVEJONAS, CIBELLE AMATO, SILMARA RONDON-MELO,

We conducted a systematic review to investigate telehealth applications in Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences (SLHS). Most of 103 studies selected concluded that the telehealth procedure had advantages over the non-telehealth alternative approach (85.5%). The results revealed that teleheath improved the quality of care, resulting in a good level of satisfaction from the users. Parents felt comfortable or as comfortable as they did with face to face (FTF) situations when discussing matters with the therapist online, and they were satisfied with their level and their child's level of interaction/rapport with the therapist. Adults described remote treatment as convenient and that would make life easier. Telehealth was also considered similar to the FTF approach in most cases. The therapists determined that telehealth applications as safe as FTF for the recipient, are comparable to a FTF session and are easy to use. The main barriers cited were the need of more data to improve the software used; the acceptance of a new proposal for health care; internet speed; and other technological limitations. It is important to point out that 25.24% of the studies did not mention barriers to the implementation of telehealth. Future studies should be conducted to provide more evidence for establishing best practices in SLHS Sciences telehealth.