Abstract

Background: In recent years has been a rapid increase in the use of information technologies in the health sector, tools such as telemedicine and e-Health have been recently incorporated to facilitate access to essential services. Despite their potential benefits - in the North African countries-the experience with these systems has been limited, there have been numerous obstacles, such as doctor shortage and technological barriers.

Objective: The main objective of our paper is to show a review of the existing research works in literature regarding the current situation of telemedicine and e-Health in North Africa.

Methods: Several academic databases - such as Science Direct, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed - were used to perform searches. The most important search parameter considered was the date of publication, which must be within the last 10 years. The most interesting articles were selected considering the following criteria: Articles in English language with the following keywords: “Telemedicine” AND/OR “eHealth” AND (“Africa” AND/OR “Morocco” AND/OR “Algeria” AND/OR “Tunisia” AND/OR “Libya” AND/OR “Egypt” AND/ OR “Sudan”).

Result: A total of 84 articles were found on telemedicine and eHealth in North Africa of which 25 have been identified as relevant work. Many of the publications found show the existing problems in these countries as well as systems developed in telemedicine and e-Health, being Egypt the country with the highest percentage (35.29%) and followed by Morocco and Libya with 17.65%, Tunisia and Algeria with 11.76% and Sudan with 5.88%.

Conclusion: From the review of the research articles analyzed it can be said that political and economic issues are a determining factor for the development of telemedicine and e-Health in North Africa, various limitations exist to expand these systems mainly in rural areas. Hence, one main contribution of our paper is to generate new developments that contribute to the management and quality of patient care for improvement.

Keywords: e-Health; North Africa; Review; Telemedicine