Teledermatology Solution Through Mobile Phone in Rural Mongolia

Taipei Medical University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Social Distance

Treatments: Device: Mobile Phone

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02193854

TaipeiMU

Details and patient eligibility

About

Objective This study is aimed to estimate the distance, time and the cost of travel saved by patients who are seeking tele-dermatology (TD) service though smart mobile phones in the resource poor settings at the rural clinics of Mongolia.

Methods A cluster-randomised trial was conducted for six months at the 20 rural health clinics selected from three districts in Mongolia. With a computer-generated sequence, health clinics were randomly allocated either to the intervention group, in which all general practitioners (GPs) received TD consultation through Sana system, or the control group, in which GPs referred patients to the dermatologist at district hospital whenever needed. The primary outcome was to estimate the distance traveled, times spend and the cost of travel required in receiving dermal care for patients in rural Mongolia. Analysis was done to estimate the difference between the aforementioned parameters among intervention and control groups.

Full description

The investigators used Sana system, that is a mobile phone-based, open source software platform for telemedicine services. The Android-based system supports multimedia, location-based data, and text. In the village health clinic, a healthcare worker will interact with a patient and collects data through a step-by-step clinical questionnaire on a smart mobile phone. As patients' data is uploaded to an open source electronic medical record system (OpenMRS) with a diagnosis-specific information and images. The consultant can access the clinical information about the patient and make appropriate diagnoses and treatment recommendations from the secondary hospital.

Enrollment: 441 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patients aged 18-98 years visiting with dermal problem.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients who do not need dermal care.
• Patients who are already under treatment for dermal problem.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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441 participants in 1 patient group

Mobile phone

Experimental group

Description:

General practitioners (GPs) received TD consultation through Sana system. Mobile phones with Sana system installed were provided to 10 rural GPs from three different districts of Mongolia.

Treatment:

Device: Mobile Phone