Smartphone Teledermoscopy Referrals: A Novel Process for Improved Triage of Skin Cancer Patients

Abstract

In this open, controlled, multicentre and prospective observational study, smartphone teledermoscopy referrals were sent from 20 primary healthcare centres to 2 dermatology departments for triage of skin lesions of concern using a smartphone application and a compatible digital dermoscope. The outcome for 816 patients referred via smartphone teledermoscopy was compared with 746 patients referred via the traditional paper-based system. When surgical treatment was required, the waiting time was significantly shorter using teledermoscopy for patients with melanoma, melanoma in situ, squamous cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma in situ and basal cell carcinoma. Triage decisions were also more reliable with teledermoscopy and over 40% of the teledermoscopy patients could potentially have avoided face-to-face visits. Only 4 teledermoscopy referrals (0.4%) had to be excluded due to poor image quality. Smartphone teledermoscopy referrals allow for faster and more efficient management of patients with skin cancer as compared to traditional paper referrals.

Mobile health solutions for the aging population: A systematic narrative analysis

“…Effective, outcomes, and communicative were mentioned in 6/60 occurrences (10%). 27,28,30,[37][38][39][40]45,46,48,53,[54][55][56]58 mHealth can change behaviour through feedback. It can mentally stimulate patients to delay the advance of dementia, improve triage decisions and arrangement of transportation through communication channels, increase self-efficacy augmenting existing interventions and thereby outcomes.…”

“…23,30,31,33,35,36,38,41,45,47,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] Table 1 illustrates and rank orders the themes from analysis of the facilitators of adoption based on frequency of their occurrence in the literature.…”

Use of Smartphones for Early Detection of Melanoma: Systematic Review (Preprint)

“…Thirty-one studies were included in the review ( Figure 1): twenty studies had been published as original articles [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50], six were conference papers [51][52][53][54][55][56] and five were research letters [57][58][59][60][61].…”

“…Fourteen studies had been conducted in Europe-Great Britain [33,40,43,60], Austria [34,51], Sweden [36,37], Ireland [61], Germany [45], Switzerland [48], Greece [56], The Netherlands [50] and France [39], nine in the USA [38,42,44,46,52,53,55,57,62], seven in Australia [32,35,41,47,49,58,59], and one in Singapore [54].…”

Teledermatology: current perspectives

“…The possibility of secure transmission of medical data and images using different devices, in situations where a health professional and a patient (or two professionals) are not in the same location, and the strong visual component of dermatology make this strategy very useful, mostly for patients in remote areas. 1 It can be used for diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of patients after a first dermatologist consultation, or to triage primary care cases and limit unnecessary referrals to dermatologists, [2][3][4][5][6] reducing social costs related to patient travel, such as productive working hours and transportation expenses.…”