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9th World Congress of Teledermatology, Imaging and AI for Skin Diseases - Abstracts (2021) (40)

Published on in Vol 8, No 1 (2022): Jan-Dec

Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/36887, first published .
Teledermatology in German-Speaking Countries: Patients’ and Physicians’ Perspectives

Teledermatology in German-Speaking Countries: Patients’ and Physicians’ Perspectives

Teledermatology in German-Speaking Countries: Patients’ and Physicians’ Perspectives

Authors of this article:

Christian Greis1 Author Orcid Image ;   Marina Otten2 ;   Patrick Reinders2 Author Orcid Image
Article Authors Cited by Tweetations Metrics

    Abstract

    1Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    2Institute for Health Services Research in Dermatology and Nursing, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

    Corresponding Author:

    Christian Greis

    Department of Dermatology

    University Hospital Zurich

    Rämistrasse 100

    Zurich, 8091

    Switzerland

    Phone: 41 44 255 31 55

    Email: Christian.Greis@derma2go.com


    Background: With increasing digitalization and the current pandemic, teledermatology has gained importance in German-speaking countries in recent years. The regulation on remote consultation methods was recently relaxed, allowing for a more widespread introduction of teledermatological health care services.

    Objective: The aim of this work is to evaluate a store-and-forward (SAF) teledermatology application from the patients’ and physicians’ perspectives.

    Methods: We carried out a noncontrolled user survey of the web-based platform derma2go in the course of the remote consultation by German dermatologists. Through the platform, patients with dermatological requests could obtain expert advice within a few hours after entering their medical history and uploading photographs of their skin lesions.

    Results: A total of 1476 (t1) and 361 (t2) patients and 2207 dermatologist ratings were included within the evaluation. A large proportion of participants were satisfied with the application (t1=83.9%; t2=81.2%). Most participants also rated the usability as high (t1=83.0% satisfied) and were satisfied with the response time of the dermatologists (t1=92.0% satisfied). In addition, a large majority agreed with the statement that they trusted the web-based application (t1=90.5%). At t2, 20.0% of those who participated stated that their skin problem had healed; for 49.8% of participants, it had already improved; for 22.0% of participants, it was unchanged; and for 3.5% of participants, skin problems had worsened. For 64.0% of users, the request was completely resolved, and for 24.2% or users, it was partly resolved as result of the consultation. For 79.7% of users, no additional information was needed by the participating dermatologists. From the practitioners’ perspective, 71.2% of all requests were completely resolved and 24.7% were partly resolved.

    Conclusions: Our evaluation has shown that SAF applications, exemplified by derma2go, are likely to improve access to dermatological care, with a high patient satisfaction and a high rate of resolved requests, from the patients’ and physicians’ perspectives. In the future, teledermatological SAF applications can represent a supplement to the existing routine care in dermatology. The indications, patient groups, and use cases, for which the application is particularly suitable, will be determined in further studies.

    iproc 2022;8(1):e36887

    doi:10.2196/36887

    Keywords

    teledermatology; telemedicine; COVID-19; pandemic; store-and-forward; synchronous; asynchronous 

    Edited by T Derrick; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 28.01.22; accepted 28.01.22; published 24.02.22

    Copyright

    ©Christian Greis, Marina Otten, Patrick Reinders. Originally published in Iproceedings (https://www.iproc.org), 24.02.2022.

    This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in Iproceedings, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.iproc.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.