Teledermatology: an intraobserver diagnostic correlation study, part I

Abstract

Many studies have been published recently on the effectiveness of teledermatology as a diagnostic tool; however, much of the data comes from live 2-way video teleconferencing consultations and very little comes from more readily available "store and forward" consultations. Moreover, most published studies compare the diagnoses of 2 different dermatologists (interobserver comparison). Given the lack of data on baseline interdermatologist diagnostic variability, the interpretation of currently available diagnostic correlation data is somewhat difficult. The objective of this study is to measure the degree of diagnostic concordance between a dermatologist seeing a patient via a teledermatology consult system and the same dermatologist seeing the same patient face-to-face in a dermatology clinic at a tertiary medical center. A random sample of 404 patients was selected from patients who had routine appointments at our dermatology clinic.