Juliana Salomão Rocha de Oliveira, Rafael Saad Fernandez, Mônica Rossatti Molina, Ana Carolina P.N. Pinto, César Ramos Rocha-Filho, Tiago M. Ferreira, Stela Verzinhasse Peres
Abstract
We aimed to analyze the risks associated with patient safety in synchronous telehealth.
Introduction
Telehealth, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), encompasses activities, systems, and health services conducted remotely by professionals using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Its objectives include providing diagnosis, promoting global health, facilitating the treatment and prevention of diseases and injuries, and advancing health research and education [1].
Materials and methods
We conducted a scoping review of systematic reviews, following the guidelines of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) [5]. This approach enabled a rapid comprehensive exploration of the existing evidence, with a narrative synthesis aimed at mapping key concepts and identifying gaps in literature.
Results
Our search initially retrieved a total of 3,641 titles and abstracts. After removing duplicates, 3,462 abstracts were screened. Of these, 3,421 studies were excluded, justification can be found in S2 Table, leaving 41 studies for further scrutiny. In the end, we included 15 systematic reviews (Fig 1).
Discussion
This scoping review identified patient safety risks associated with telehealth services. The most frequently reported concern was the patient’s experience, highlighted in 60% (n = 9) of the included studies [9,11,14,16–19,21,22].
Conclusion
This scoping review provides evidence that, while telehealth offers valuable alternatives for healthcare delivery, it also presents specific patient safety risks that warrant careful consideration. The most frequently reported risks were related to the patient’s experience and communication failures, followed by issues concerning medication safety, patient identification, and training gaps.
Citation: Oliveira JSRd, Fernandez RS, Molina MR, Pinto ACP, Rocha-Filho CR, Ferreira TM, et al. (2025) Patient safety risk associated with synchronous telehealth: A scoping review. PLoS One 20(12): e0336992. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0336992
Editor: Jahanpour Alipour, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF
Received: February 28, 2025; Accepted: November 1, 2025; Published: December 16, 2025
Copyright: © 2025 Oliveira et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: This is a scoping review, and all relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
