<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.0 20040830//EN" "http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/2.0/journalpublishing.dtd">
<article article-type="abstract" dtd-version="2.0" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">IPROC</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="nlm-ta">iproc</journal-id>
      <journal-title>Iproceedings</journal-title>
      <issn pub-type="epub">2369-6893</issn>
      <publisher>
        <publisher-name>JMIR Publications</publisher-name>
        <publisher-loc>Toronto, Canada</publisher-loc>
      </publisher>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">v8i1e36887</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="pmid"/>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.2196/36887</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Abstract</subject>
        </subj-group>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="article-type">
          <subject>Abstract</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Teledermatology in German-Speaking Countries: Patients’ and Physicians’ Perspectives</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="editor">
          <name>
            <surname>Derrick</surname>
            <given-names>Thomas</given-names>
          </name>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib id="contrib1" contrib-type="author" corresp="yes">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Greis</surname>
            <given-names>Christian</given-names>
          </name>
          <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
          <address>
            <institution>Department of Dermatology</institution>
            <institution>University Hospital Zurich</institution>
            <addr-line>Rämistrasse 100</addr-line>
            <addr-line>Zurich, 8091</addr-line>
            <country>Switzerland</country>
            <phone>41 44 255 31 55</phone>
            <email>Christian.Greis@derma2go.com</email>
          </address>
          <ext-link ext-link-type="orcid">https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7052-2010</ext-link>
        </contrib>
        <contrib id="contrib2" contrib-type="author">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Otten</surname>
            <given-names>Marina</given-names>
          </name>
          <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib id="contrib3" contrib-type="author">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Reinders</surname>
            <given-names>Patrick</given-names>
          </name>
          <degrees>MSc</degrees>
          <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
          <ext-link ext-link-type="orcid">https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2961-2698</ext-link>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <aff id="aff1">
        <label>1</label>
        <institution>Department of Dermatology</institution>
        <institution>University Hospital Zurich</institution>
        <addr-line>Zurich</addr-line>
        <country>Switzerland</country>
      </aff>
      <aff id="aff2">
        <label>2</label>
        <institution>Institute for Health Services Research in Dermatology and Nursing</institution>
        <institution>University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf</institution>
        <addr-line>Hamburg</addr-line>
        <country>Germany</country>
      </aff>
      <author-notes>
        <corresp>Corresponding Author: Christian Greis <email>Christian.Greis@derma2go.com</email></corresp>
      </author-notes>
      <pub-date pub-type="collection">
        <season>Jan-Dec</season>
        <year>2022</year>
      </pub-date>
      <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>24</day>
        <month>2</month>
        <year>2022</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>8</volume>
      <issue>1</issue>
      <elocation-id>e36887</elocation-id>
      <history>
        <date date-type="received">
          <day>28</day>
          <month>1</month>
          <year>2022</year>
        </date>
        <date date-type="accepted">
          <day>28</day>
          <month>1</month>
          <year>2022</year>
        </date>
      </history>
      <copyright-statement>©Christian Greis, Marina Otten, Patrick Reinders. Originally published in Iproceedings (https://www.iproc.org), 24.02.2022.</copyright-statement>
      <copyright-year>2022</copyright-year>
      <license license-type="open-access" xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
        <p>This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in Iproceedings, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.iproc.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.</p>
      </license>
      <self-uri xlink:href="https://www.iproc.org/2022/1/e36887" xlink:type="simple"/>
      <abstract>
        <sec sec-type="background">
          <title>Background</title>
          <p>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.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec sec-type="objective">
          <title>Objective</title>
          <p>The aim of this work is to evaluate a store-and-forward (SAF) teledermatology application from the patients’ and physicians’ perspectives.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec sec-type="methods">
          <title>Methods</title>
          <p>We carried out a noncontrolled user survey of the web-based platform <italic>derma2go</italic> 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.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec sec-type="results">
          <title>Results</title>
          <p>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.</p>
        </sec>
        <sec sec-type="conclusions">
          <title>Conclusions</title>
          <p>Our evaluation has shown that SAF applications, exemplified by <italic>derma2go</italic>, 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.</p>
        </sec>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>teledermatology</kwd>
        <kwd>telemedicine</kwd>
        <kwd>COVID-19</kwd>
        <kwd>pandemic</kwd>
        <kwd>store-and-forward</kwd>
        <kwd>synchronous</kwd>
        <kwd>asynchronous</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>
