The accectability of smartphone-based teledermatology in outpatient care

Abstract

Introduction: We established smartphone-based teledermatology (STD) services to provide direct patient care. To our knowledge, only a few studies have analyzed this typeof asynchronous teledermatology (Bosanac, Nguyen, &Bui, 2018). Our aim was to analyze patients’ acceptance of teledermatology alongside their sociodemographic profiles.Methods: A single-center, retrospective study was conducted from February 1 to September 30, 2024, using a mobile application on the LSMU Kaunas Clinics Patients Portal, where patients submitted personal data and skin rash images (Liutkus et al., 2023). The study involved 42 men and83 women (n = 125) who used the STD service. Medians with 25% and 75% interquartile ranges were calculated.Quantitative data were compared using the Mann-Whitney test or Spearman’s coefficient (r). Patients were grouped bylight and moderate-to-severe STD service use, and odds ratios were calculated for relevant variables. Results: The median age was 40.5 [30.5-54.5] years for menand 36.0 [26.0-44.3] years for women (p = 0.101). Most patients lived in large cities (99, 79.2%), with 17 (13.6%) in other cities and 9 (7.2%) in rural areas (p<0.001). The median travel time for patients to see a dermatologist was25 [15-60] minutes. Sixty-three (50.4%) respondents accessed the hospital via a personal computer, 61 (48.8%) via a smartphone, and one patient (0.8%) via a tablet. Patients who accessed the STD account via smartphone were younger than those who accessed it via personal computer (ages 33.0 [25.0-41.0] years and 39.5 [32.8-51.5] years,respectively; p = 0.005). A total of 115 (92.0%) patients were satisfied with the STD service, while only 10 (8.0%)indicated they were neutral (7, 5.6%), dissatisfied (2, 1.6%),or very dissatisfied (1, 0.8%). Many respondents indicated they would recommend the STD service to relatives and friends and would like to use it in the future, with 122(97.6%) and 123 (98.4%) responding affirmatively, respectively. We assessed the acceptability of STD by ease of use or moderate-to-severe use, depending on sociodemographic characteristics, by calculating the odds ratio. Patients under the age of 43 were three times more likely to use STD services than older patients. Gender, place of residence, marital status, and higher education were not significant factors for STD acceptability.Conclusions: Sending an image of a rash to a dermatologist via smartphone is acceptable from the patient’s perspective, particularly for younger individuals.