TeleDermatology: The teledermatological solution mSkin® for daily practice

Abstract

Background: Health care for the increasing number of patients with chronic illnesses has become a major challenge to the politics of public health, especially in rural areas. Follow-up care for those patients requires a great amount of resources. Apart from managing appointments, patients often have to accept long journeys and waiting times. Objective: Implementation of teledermatology solutions, providing telemedicine care for patients with skin diseases in structurally weak regions. Using the example of the region Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV), the main focus was to build and expand a telemedicine structure in an area where the number of registered specialist physicians is expected to continually decline. A further objective was to intensify the cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary cooperation between physicians and dermatologists, as well as hospitals (teleconsultation module). Methods: To ensure the highest level of comprehensive care, the project partners currently involved are: 10 dermatologists, 95 physicians, 10 emergency departments of hospitals and one rehabilitation clinic in MV. The challenge of designing a solution that incorporates complex medical data, as well as adhering to the legal requirements of data protection and data security (GDPR, eHealth law, eHealth initiative), has been met. Results and discussion: An innovative solution to support the care of patients with chronic skin diseases or wounds has been developed and implemented. Mobile applications and web applications have been designed and are running on the secure telematics platform. The teleconsultation module is being used. Conclusion: Teledermatolocial solutions offer measurable benefits to patients and health care providers and can be seamlessly incorporated into existing settings.