Asynchronous Dermatology Teleconsultations Using a Personal Health Record

Health information and communication technologies such as telemedicine provide alternatives for patient and physician communication. An increasing number of patients, providers and institutions are using this technologies to seek or provide health care. Asynchronous consultations requires a service of storing and forwarding health related information by the patient to the specialist physician or other healthcare provider. Dermatology is one of the major medical specialties in which telemedicine as proven benefits. There are many described deployments of asynchronous teleconsultation for dermatology, but in most cases telemedicine applications work as stand alone solutions. The present work describes the design and deployment of an asynchronous dermatological teleconsultation service which uses the interaction of the Electronic Health Record and the Personal Health Record in a high complexity university hospital.