Innovations in teledermatology: Direct patient-specialist care enabled by mobile technology

Teledermatology is a rapidly evolving field with increasing use of mobile technology and direct patient-to-specialist encounters. We review a pilot study by Frühauf et al., in which the authors found a high acceptance of a mobile teledermatology service among psoriasis patients and their dermatologists. Patient acceptance of mobile teledermatology was high regardless of their health-related quality of life, suggesting that mobile teledermatology could be a valuable tool for home monitoring of psoriasis patients. Future studies with larger sample sizes are necessary to confirm these findings. Furthermore, new studies need to address questions of patient selection for this form of telehealth delivery, technological limitations, reimbursement considerations and the medical-legal aspect of delivering direct care via mobile technology-enabled platforms.