Concordance and time estimation of store-and-forward mobile teledermatology compared to classical face-to-face consultation

Smartphones have overcome the limitations of image quality seen in older devices and opened a new field of telemedicine called "mobile teledermatology". Technological advances and the need to reduce health service costs will strongly promote the development of telemedicine. For this reason...

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Published inActa dermato-venereologica Vol. 95; no. 1; pp. 35 - 39
Main Authors Nami, Niccolò, Massone, Cesare, Rubegni, Pietro, Cevenini, Gabriele, Fimiani, Michele, Hofmann-Wellenhof, Rainer
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Sweden 01.01.2015
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Cell Phone
Child
Child, Preschool
Dermatology - instrumentation
Dermatology - methods
Efficiency
Female
Humans
Infant
Male
Middle Aged
Observer Variation
Office Visits
Predictive Value of Tests
Remote Consultation - instrumentation
Remote Consultation - methods
Reproducibility of Results
Skin Diseases - pathology
Skin Diseases - therapy
Task Performance and Analysis
Telepathology - instrumentation
Telepathology - methods
Time Factors
Young Adult
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Summary:Smartphones have overcome the limitations of image quality seen in older devices and opened a new field of telemedicine called "mobile teledermatology". Technological advances and the need to reduce health service costs will strongly promote the development of telemedicine. For this reason, we evaluated the concordance between store-and-forward mobile teledermatology and the classical face-to-face dermatological visit. We also measured the time taken to submit a teleconsultation using a smartphone. Before conventional face-to-face visit, a final-year resident of the three-year course for general practitioners collected medical history, took digital images of skin diseases with a smartphone and, measuring the time required to complete this operation, transmitted them to an expert teledermatologist. In 391 patients we obtained a concordance between face-to-face and store-and-forward diagnosis of 91.05% (Cohen κ coefficient = 0.906). On average only few minutes needs to be added to a normal visit to transmit the cases to an expert teledermatologist.
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ISSN:0001-5555
1651-2057
DOI:10.2340/00015555-1876