Smart phones and apps application in dermatology

Mobile phones are a device that is more than just a phone and more than a personel digital assistant. Nowadays a phone is as a powerful handheld computer,camera,video recorder,media player,GPS receiver, MP3 player,radio and as well as a communication tool. Smartphones (mobile phones with advanced computing capability) are rapidly gaining new use with the advent of dowloadable applications known as 'Apps'. There are a lot of medical apps avaliable. Dermatology themed smartphone apps were provided as reference materials,illustrated databases of common skin conditions for accessing online versions of popular dermatology textbook and journals;dermatology based questionnairs; including disease severity scoring calculators and/or providing automated photo analysers for skin lesions / as an electronic dermoscopy. Most of the apps applications are free of charge and can be easily dowloaded to smartphones. Furthermore the possibility to send and save both text and images by this technology seems perfectly tailored to dermatology. Recently electronic teaching and learning via smartphones are becoming very popular for medical students aswell. However there is relatively little research on medical uses and potential roles of them in dermatology. This article summarizes the curent trends in the 'smartphone market' and takes a glance at some dermatology apps 'which are currently available.