Managing Epilepsy by Telemedicine in Resource-Poor Settings

Epilepsy is a common and treatable disease; in rich countries the expectation is that two-thirds of people will have their seizure episodes controlled on medication. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) however most people are not on treatment either because no doctors live near them or the logistics of affordable drug supply is absent. People with epilepsy then are prone to the bad effects of this disease—death, disfigurement from accidents and burns, and social problems due to the stigma with which the disease is associated. So this represents a failure of conventional face-to-face medicine. Might a telemedicine approach do better? The World Health Organization has suggested that non-physician health workers are empowered to diagnose and manage epilepsy; to do this they will need considerable medical support, which might be provided by telemedicine through the telephone, smartphone applications or a combination. This paper sets out what telemedicine does at present for people with epilepsy in LMICs and suggests how it might be developed in the future.