A Smartphone App and Cloud-Based Consultation System for Burn Injury Emergency Care.

Background: Each year more than 10 million people worldwide are burned severely enough to require medical attention, with clinical outcomes noticeably worse in resource poor settings. Expert clinical advice on acute injuries can play a determinant role and there is a need for novel approaches that allow for timely access to advice. We developed an interactive mobile phone application that enables transfer of both patient data and pictures of a wound from the point-of-care to a remote burns expert who, in turn, provides advice back.

Can We Trust the Use of Smartphone Cameras in Clinical Practice? Laypeople Assessment of Their Image Quality.

Background: Smartphone cameras are rapidly being introduced in medical practice, among other devices for image-based teleconsultation. Little is known, however, about the actual quality of the images taken, which is the object of this study.

Materials And Methods: A series of nonclinical objects (from three broad categories) were photographed by a professional photographer using three smartphones (iPhone(®) 4 [Apple, Cupertino, CA], Samsung [Suwon, Korea] Galaxy S2, and BlackBerry(®) 9800 [BlackBerry Ltd.