Telemedicine has been increasingly adopted in various healthcare settings to improve access to services, particularly for underserved populations such as those living in rural areas. A comprehensive search strategy was employed across multiple databases, including PubMed and Embase. Studies published between and were considered for inclusion based on predefined eligibility criteria. Patient satisfaction scores showed a median improvement of 15% (95% CI: 8-24%) following the implementation of telemedicine services, indicating an effective increase in patient engagement and trust. The review underscores the potential of telemedicine to enhance access to eye care services for rural populations, although further longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these initial findings. Investment should be prioritised in developing robust telemedicine infrastructure and training programmes to ensure sustainable service delivery in underserved areas. Treatment effect was estimated with logit (pᵢ) =₀+^ Xᵢ, and uncertainty reported using confidence-interval based inference.
Ngqaro et al. (Sat,) studied this question.