Over the past two decades, El Salvador has made significant progress in its HIV response, expanding access to testing and treatment while strengthening the public health systems that support long-term care. Today, 24 specialised clinics provide testing, treatment, and counselling, with plans to expand services to all 31 national hospitals.

Yet despite these gains, challenges remain, including ensuring that people can access services quickly, confidentially, and without barriers such as distance, stigma, or limited provider availability. As the country looks toward the next phase of epidemic control, digital health tools are emerging as an important part of the solution.

Bringing HIV Services into the Digital Age

Against this backdrop, digital health solutions are becoming a powerful complement to facility-based care. Through the Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) project, Palladium is supporting the expansion of DoctorSV, a telemedicine platform offering innovative and scalable way to expand access to health services, including HIV care.

As El Salvador's national telemedicine platform, DoctorSV is designed to connect patients with remote clinical care while also generating real-time health data that can support surveillance, referrals, and public health planning. Through EpiC, Palladium is helping strengthen the workforce, operational systems, and data infrastructure needed to support national scale-up.

DoctorSV has already shown value as a tool for identifying emerging trends in sexually transmitted infections and HIV through its epidemiological monitoring functions. Palladium is also supporting enhancements to interoperability and data analytics, creating opportunities for telemedicine data to inform surveillance, early warning systems, and public health decision-making more broadly.

Turning Telemedicine into a Pathway to Care

In response to rising diagnoses among platform users, DoctorSV—working closely with MINSAL’s HIV/STD Program—has developed telemedicine-specific guidelines for HIV and STI consultations. Adapted from national standards, these protocols are now in the early stages of piloting.

While still being refined, these protocols mark an important step toward integrating HIV services into digital platforms. Through DoctorSV, clinicians can identify patients at risk, provide initial counselling, guide users toward testing, and facilitate referrals to appropriate public-sector treatment sites. Coordination with the national HIV program helps ensure that patients diagnosed through or referred by DoctorSV can access confirmatory laboratory testing and antiretroviral therapy through MINSAL’s established systems.

This model can strengthen both the reach and efficiency of the national HIV response. DoctorSV serves as an entry point into care and a complement to existing services. It can support earlier recognition of symptoms, reduce delays in care-seeking, and offer a discreet channel for people who may avoid in-person testing because of stigma. Its capacity to map cases geographically and connect patients to nearby services can also improve continuity of care.

The potential of the platform extends beyond diagnosis and referral. Planned training for more than 100 supervisors overseeing more than 2,000 telemedicine providers will help strengthen clinical quality and consistent use of HIV consultation protocols nationwide. Alongside workforce development, Palladium is supporting the creation of practical guidance, short training videos, and decision-support tools that can help clinicians navigate referrals, follow-up care, and adherence counselling more consistently.

From HIV Response to Health System Strengthening

The alignment between DoctorSV and El Salvador's national HIV strategy is clear. Beyond supporting HIV services today, Palladium is helping establish the technical and operational foundations needed for long-term sustainability, ensuring the platform can continue evolving as a national digital health asset that supports multiple health priorities.

By connecting digital tools with established public health systems, the country can expand access, improve efficiency, and address emerging gaps among populations with high incidence and frequent use of telemedicine. As HIV teleconsultation protocols are piloted and refined, DoctorSV offers a scalable model for how digital platforms can augment—not replace—traditional service delivery.

As El Salvador continues working toward epidemic control, DoctorSV illustrates the value of combining technology with strong public health systems.

Telemedicine is not a standalone solution, but it can provide an additional pathway for clinical guidance, laboratory referral, prescriptions, and chronic care support. At the same time, investments in interoperability, data analytics, workforce development, and sustainability are helping transform DoctorSV from a virtual consultation platform into a broader digital health asset—one that can strengthen disease surveillance, support chronic disease management, and improve the resilience of the health system as a whole.