**7. Conclusions**

Reflecting on the public health problem that NTDs implies worldwide, improving the efficiency of the diagnosis of these pathologies is of vital importance for the development of more effective treatments. At the same time, an accurate diagnosis will limit the abusive use of drugs, thus reducing the appearance of resistance phenomena in the pathogens that cause these diseases. The traditional clinical diagnosis of infectious diseases consists of a differential analysis supported by a series of tests in order to identify the causal pathogen, which ranges from microscopic observation, the culture of microorganisms, and the detection of antibodies to the amplification of nucleic acids. Although molecular diagnostic assays are a rapid way to diagnose the most common infections, almost all current conventional microbial assays target a limited number of pathogens, these limitations mean that pathogens are not detected in up to 60% of cases and sometimes the use of cultures from clinical samples is required, where many of these pathogens are difficult to culture. Although the application of these molecular methods is a routine tool for the diagnosis of numerous diseases, they have not yet been fully used for the diagnosis of NTDs. In this sense, regardless of the current advantages and disadvantages of NGS and dPCR, these techniques have a promising application to contribute to an improvement in the diagnosis of NTDs, since they provide rapid results, allow the determination of parasitaemia in asymptomatic infections and low density, as well as the detection of pathogens difficult to cultivate. Both techniques have a higher sensitivity than conventional techniques used for diagnosis. However, more evaluations are needed, and especially the development of studies that combine NSG and dPCR technologies for the generation of comprehensive knowledge that allows a better understanding of NTDs in different ecoepidemiological contexts, as well as in the dynamics of the transmission cycles of the pathogens that cause these diseases and thus meet the goals, intermediate measures, and indicators of the roadmap on neglected tropical diseases 2021–2030 to prevent, control, and eliminate NTDs.
