Connecting People with People: Diagnosing Persons with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Using Telehealth.
Telehealth can reliably extend FASD diagnosis to families who once faced years of travel and waiting.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors reviewed past reports on using telehealth to diagnose fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
They focused on rural and remote areas where experts are scarce.
The paper ends with practical tips for starting a tele-diagnosis program.
What they found
Telehealth lets trained teams see children, talk with families, and score tests without long travel.
The review shows the approach is doable and can reach kids who otherwise wait years.
How this fits with other research
Sutherland et al. (2025) give hard numbers: telehealth autism exams matched in-person results 90% of the time.
That study extends this review by proving high accuracy, not just feasibility.
Meimei et al. (2022) pool many ASD tools and find good sensitivity, backing the wider claim that remote diagnosis works for neurodevelopmental conditions.
Stainbrook et al. (2019) add that once telemedicine autism clinics opened, rural referrals and show-ups rose—evidence that families will use the service.
Why it matters
If you serve rural clients, you can now refer them to telehealth FASD clinics with confidence.
Use the review’s checklist to ask local teams about cameras, internet speed, and cultural support.
One quick win: schedule a short tech trial run before the formal exam to cut no-shows.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a diagnostic term used to describe an array of structural, neurocognitive, and behavioral effects that result from prenatal alcohol exposure. While ongoing efforts have been made to increase the capacity of communities to provide early FASD diagnosis, there continues to be on-going challenges, particularly for remote and rural communities. Telehealth is the use of technology to connect communities at a distance and has been effectively used in medicine for several decades. This literature review describes the use of telehealth in FASD and other developmental disabilities and makes recommendations for how telehealth can be used to facilitate the assessment and diagnosis of FASD in rural and remote communities.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2021 · doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-386495-6.00002-3