JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

With advances in telecommunication, especially smartphones, teledermatology services are now being directly demanded from the specialists by the patients themselves. This model is known as patient initiated, direct-care teledermatology. It has been pushed to the forefront due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective:

The objectives of this study were to determine patient’s satisfaction and dermatologist’s confidence in making a diagnosis in direct-care mobile phone based teledermatology.

Methods:

Patients availing direct-care teledermatology services during Covid-19 at a tertiary care centre were subjected to a questionnaire within 5 days of the teleconsultation to assess patient’s satisfaction and preference of using this model during and beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic. For assessing dermatologists’ aspect, the teledermatologists rated their confidence in making the clinical diagnosis on a scale of 1 - 10 for every case.

Results:

Out of total of 437 participants, 419 (95.9%) were satisfied with this mode of teledermatology. An overwhelming majority of 428 (97.9%) felt safe consulting the dermatologist by teleconsultation and not having to visit hospital in this COVID pandemic. Two hundred and sixty nine (61.6%) agreed that they would be happy to use teledermatology service even beyond COVID pandemic. The dermatologists’ confidence score in making accurate diagnosis ranged from 3 to 10 with a mean of 9.20 ± 1.12.

Conclusions:

The high levels of patient satisfaction and dermatologists’ confidence scores indicate that direct-care mobile teledermatology may be a useful tool in providing dermatological services in appropriate settings and its use should be explored even beyond COVID pandemic.