Skin Emergency Teledermatology Service (SETS)

Aim: To conduct ongoing audits of the Skin Emergency Teledermatology Service

Description: Dermatologists at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, provide specialist support for the diagnosis and management of acute skin conditions across Queensland. Clinicians in Emergency Departments and rural hospitals throughout Queensland send skin images and relevant clinical history for review by an on-call dermatologist. Clinicians have rated the service as useful and the number of referrals is growing rapidly.

Progress: The 2012 audit was published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare in 2013 (Biscak et al.). The most recent audit of the service from 2014 was recently published in the Australasian Journal of Dermatology (Finnane et al).

Future projects will evaluate the service's cost-effectiveness, examine how to increase clinician engagement in various settings, and investigate ways of improving the systems used for transferring clinical information.