Teledermatology: just cool or a real tool?

Abstract

Telemedicine is the practice of healthcare using interactive audio, visual and data communication. This includes healthcare delivery, diagnoses, consultation and treatment as well as education and transfer of medical data. The transmission of multimedia streams has remained a major challenge. Although the Internet remains basically insecure, technology allows today to define and implement complete security profiles for specific (medical) communities. Data security is a must as in all other areas of applied medicine. Teledermatology offers possibilities in consulting, continuous medical education or teleteaching. In the future, consulting and asking for a second opinion will be the gold standard of medical care. The quality of healthcare will be improved without saving direct costs. However, indirect costs such as time and effort for the patient and the citizen will be reduced.