Teledermatology Solution Through Mobile Phone in Rural Mongolia

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.