Live Interactive Teledermatologic Consultation: Clinical Evaluation and the Patients' Satisfaction

Jo, Seong Jin; Cho, Hyun Hee; Paik, Seung Hwan; Kim, Kyu Han; Eun, Hee Chul; Kwon, Oh Sang

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Telemedicine is broadly defined as using telecommunication technology to transfer medical information. Teledermatology is defined as using telemedicine in the field of dermatology, and this can be divided into a storage-and-forward system and a live interactive system. The latter uses video-conferencing equipment and it is known to be more useful than the former. However, there have been few studies on live interactive teledermatologic consultation in Korea. OBJECTIVE: We wanted to describe and quantify teledematologic consultation and to assess patients' satisfaction with the live interactive consultation by using a questionnaire.
METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed the records of the patients who were consulted through the teledermatologic system. To assess patients' satisfaction with the live interactive teledermatologic consultation, we asked the patients to complete a questionnaire after the consultation.
RESULTS
A total of 98 patients were consulted for 112 skin problems. The most frequent skin problem was eczematous diseases (33.9%), followed by infectious diseases (25.0%). Concerning the treatment efficacy, 90.7% of the patients experienced improvement of their initial symptom. Only one main diagnosis was recorded for 64.3% of the cases, and one main diagnosis with one other possible diagnosis to be differentiated was recorded for 30.4% of the cases. For the aspect of the technical quality, 66.1% of the patients were satisfied or very satisfied with the performance of the instruments for live interactive communication. In addition, half of the patients were satisfied or very satisfied with the teledermatologic consultation, and 59.7% of the patients answered that they would use teledermatologic consultation system again if another skin problem develops.
CONCLUSION
With its good performance, teledermatologic consultation seems to be helpful and satisfactory for the patients who are unable to visit the dermatologic out-patients clinic.