Are dermatologists in private practice interested in teledermatological services?

Diagnosing dermatologic skin conditions can be difficult, especially in pig mented skin lesions. Therefore, the consultation of an expert via telederma tology could prove vital. For this purpose, a rapid transfer of medical dat a including high resolution images is essential. This transfer can be perfo rmed with a variety of modem telecommunication technologies, including ISDN , highspeed-ISDN, Internet, and Intranet. As the levels of both communicati on software and camera-systems can be quite different, our survey investiga ted the equipment of 84 dermatologists in private practice. A questionaire was distributed on computer equipment, operating system software, and any i mage documentation systems used, as well as required telecommunications equ ipment and possible applications of teledermatology. This survey showed a r esponse rate of 54% and proves that dermatologists in private practice are interested in telemedicine services. Most dermatolgists surveyed use Window s 95 operating software and 74% have access to modem ISDN modems or PC-card s. Dermatologists currently prefer applications with low-tech communication hardware and software requirements. Consultation of dermatological centers was the favored application with 59%. Our survey clearly demonstrates that a high percentage of dermatologists in private practice would use telederm atology. In our experience, for the excellence of this service an image doc umentation system is essential to provide the teledermatolocical expert wit h standardized images with constant illumination.