TY  - JOUR
AU  - Greis, Christian
AU  - Otten, Marina
AU  - Reinders, Patrick
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/2/24
TI  - Teledermatology in German-Speaking Countries: Patients’ and Physicians’ Perspectives
JO  - iproc
SP  - e36887
VL  - 8
IS  - 1
KW  - teledermatology
KW  - telemedicine
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - pandemic
KW  - store-and-forward
KW  - synchronous
KW  - asynchronous
AB  - 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. 
SN  - 2369-6893
UR  - https://www.iproc.org/2022/1/e36887
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/36887
DO  - 10.2196/36887
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/36887
ER  -