Pilot study of store and forward teledermatology services in Perth, Western Australia

In remote areas, telemedicine services can improve the quality of access to specialist medical care and dermatology is well suited to the use of this technology. There is no published work on teledermatology services in Australia. Our purpose was to investigate the reliability of dermatological diagnoses obtained using a store and forward telemedicine system, which is being developed to offer specialist consultative services to patients in remote areas of Western Australia. We report on a small prospective non-randomized pilot study conducted at Royal Perth Hospital, Western Australia which compared diagnoses reached following telemedicine consultations with diagnoses reached following traditional face-to-face consultations. In 25 out of 50 consultations, identical diagnoses were reached. In the remaining five cases, the preferred diagnosis and first differential diagnosis were reversed in order of preference. We feel this system is sufficiently promising to trial more extensively in the field.