Teleneuropsychological Assessment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Where do we go from here?

Abstract

Objective: With the rapid spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and the subsequent alterations to the delivery of health care, telehealth has become an essential service worldwide. Neuropsychology is similarly attempting to adopt telecommunication to deliver neuropsychological services to clients. The purpose this article is to review the utility and value of teleneuropsychological assessment, discuss practical issues and possible barriers related to its implementation and use, and propose considerations and achievable goals to increase the use, acceptance, and clinical utility of teleneuropsychological evaluations.

Method: We reviewed the published literature to extract information about the efficacy and limitations of the methods that are currently used to deliver teleneuropsychological services, as well as current guidelines and ethical principles most salient to teleneuropsychological practice.

Conclusions: Current literature suggests that teleneuropsychological assessment is feasible and acceptable in many patient populations. Practitioners wishing to implement teleneuropsychological assessment should consider using secure testing platforms, participate in continuing education on the topic of remote/online evaluation, and become familiar with alternative technologies. We implore clinicians, researchers, and trainees who have successfully integrated teleneuropsychology into their current practice to keep detailed records of their methods and results in hopes of adding this data to a larger data repository or to publish these results to add to the small, but growing, teleneuropsychology literature. Future research should focus on generating new normative datasets for tests administered remotely, which will involve the pooling of data from multiple sources using teleneuropsychological assessment.