Use of Smartphones in Telemedicine: Comparative Study Between Standard and Teledermatological Evaluation of High-Complex Care Hospital Inpatients.

BACKGROUND

It is estimated that there are around 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide. Considering the availability and convenience, it appears to be a suitable device for store-and-forward (SF) consultations.

INTRODUCTION

Although teledermatology has been suggested as an effective way of reducing costs and providing otherwise inaccessible expert evaluation, most studies have relied on high cost and high technological means.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We conducted a study with inpatients that required dermatological evaluation in a high-complexity university hospital, accessing the correlation between traditional face-to-face evaluation and SF teledermatology, with data and pictures collected by medical students using smartphone cameras and then sent to consultants by e-mail.

RESULTS

For 2 months, we evaluated 100 patients and, as a result, the total agreement between both consultation modalities was 54%, the partial agreement was 27%, and the disagreement was 19%.

DISCUSSION

This study points out that SF teledermatology with the use of mobile phone is comparable to traditional face-to-face evaluation. Furthermore, most of the disagreements were probably related to the inexperience of the medical residents.

CONCLUSION

Our study suggests that a smartphone-based teledermatology inpatient consultation model could be a reasonable option for hospitals lacking dermatological services. Also, it may be as or more effective than face-to-face consultations, if performed by a more experienced dermatologist. When feasible, photographing training should be performed.