Implementierung teledermatologischer Konsile in die hausärztliche Versorgung – eine kontrollierte Studie mit qualitativ-quantitativer Prozessevaluation (TeleDerm)

Aim of this project is an integrated solution for communication between general practioneers (GPs) and medical specialists in dermatology to improve medical care in undersupplied regions. GPs as principal contact persons provide healthcare in local neighborhoods. Yet in some cases it is necessary for them to consult specialists to confirm a first diagnosis. Besides general difficulties in timely getting appointments, especially in rural areas this often means costly and time consuming trips for patients for only short consultations of the specialists. Here telemedicine has been proven a valid tool to relive the health system from the resulting costs and efforts for the patients without loss of quality.

However the necessary process has to be established to the respective medical needs by respecting medical standards as well as billing and data privacy. This means appropriate standardization of medical data transfer and storage, which is an ongoing research issue of the electronic health record in general. In germany an additional challenge for practical integration of computer aided solutions into the telemedical process consists in the plurality of 150 GP software systems and over 100 different health insurances. 

The Telederm project aims at establishing a working solution that is applicable to the entire german health system.

In Reutlingen we provide the knowledge and softwarecomponents for the communication infrastructure, medical data interfaces, deployment and operations. Our platform allows for arbitrary data mapping into a normalized data model and back again via a public key infrastructure (Project: Reading Center). Our focus lies on a solution that allows for integration of different providers of telemedicine services by offering an easy-to-deploy middleware. In the Telederm project our concept is realized by exemplarily integrating the server of our project partner KSYOS as a teledermatology provider into the healtcare network.

The Telederm project is funded by the German Innovationsfonds at the Gemeinsamer Bundesauschuss as the toplevel committee of self-governance of the german health system)

This project is part of the general CAMed research focus on understanding the fundamental principles and paradigms of distributed data integration in medical applications.