Teledermatology Helps Doctors and Hospitals to Serve Their Clients

Abstract

Telemedicine contributes to efficiency increase and leads to the accelerated development and use of the internet based electronic patient record. The broad use of telemedicine is hampered by rigid decision structures, slow adaptation processes and concern for its consequences. Health Management Practice (HMP) addresses these issues by developing, investigating and implementing telemedicine tools in a modular way. KSYOS TeleMedical Centre, the first virtual healthcare institution in The Netherlands, has successfully applied HMP on teledermatology. Teledermatology has led to high satisfaction and learning effect, 65,1% referral reduction, 40% cost savings, and better quality of care. Teledermatology is an excellent tool for hospitals to dosage their waiting list, increase and strengthen their contacts with general practitioners, and provide them and the patients with better service. HMP has enabled KSYOS to perform over 16.000 teleconsultations, expand teledermatology to other EU countries, as well as to other areas such as teleophtalmology, telespirometry and telecardiology.