Re-designing and Evaluation of Tele-dermatology Software for Skin Diseases

The continuous increase in the demand for specialized skin care services, together with the unbalanced geographical distribution of these specialists, has limited the access of patients to these services. Teledermatology is one of the innovative approaches that can be considered as a solution to improve the access to specialized skin care services with minimal material resources in developing countries such as Iran.
The present study is an applied and aimed to re-designing and evaluating tele-dermatology software. In this research, redesign of the software was done through obtaining the users feedback after being used in clinical setting, then final version of the software designed and usability evaluation test was conducted.
The usability testing result, show dermatologist and GP were very satisfied with the system and overall average scores obtained were 8 out of a total of 9 achievable scores. The scores earned was respectively: 7.8 for overall reaction to the system, 8.5 for screen feature, 7.9 for terminology and system information, 8.3 for Learning and 7.5 for system capability.
The experience gained from this research shows that for the successful development and use of telehealth tools, need engage and collaboration with main stakeholder, identify, understand and modeled work flows and processes related to the provision of patient services and treatment. Also in order to increase the usability and user satisfaction, the design and development of systems should be based on the principle of user-centered design and engagement of system stakeholders at all stages of system design and development.