A prospective study of mobile phones for dermatology in a clinical setting.
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Date
2013-10-28
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Abstract
We evaluated the accuracy of diagnoses made from pictures taken with the built in cameras of mobile phones in a real life clinical setting A total of 263 patients took part who photographed their own lesions where possible and provided clinical information via a questionnaire After the teledermatology procedure each patient was examined face to face and a gold standard diagnosis was made The telemedicine data and pictures were diagnosed by 15 dermatologists The 299 cases contained 1 22 clinical images each median 3 Nine dermatologists finished all the cases and the remaining six completed some of them thus providing 2893 decisions Overall 61 of all cases were rated as possible to diagnose and of those 80 were correct in comparison with the face to face diagnosis Image quality was evaluated and the median was 5 on a 10 point scale There was a significant correlation between the correct diagnosis and the quality of the photographs taken P Under 0 001 In nearly two thirds of all cases a teledermatology diagnosis was possible however there was insufficient information to make a telemedicine diagnosis in about one third of the cases If applied carefully mobile phones could be a powerful tool for people to optimize their health care status