- Turning to the UK, experiences were around the turn of the millennium, with lots of pilot studies and experiments going on around the year 2000.
- The British Teledermatology Society was established in 2003 and has had a determining role:
- early meetings, as a specialist interest group giving a symposium session at the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) annual conference, attracted very few attendees in the first few years
- in the last few years the rooms are packed to capacity.
- Five yearly national surveys, starting in 2006, have been conducted to look at changing attitudes to teledermatology and its use in the UK, and this data has been published and presented in the past.
- the group has pushed the teledermatology agenda by having regular updates to the BAD membership in the quarterly bulletin, and also educational events, not only at the BAD conference, but also educational courses for people interested in setting up teledermatology services
- also the National Guidance Documents on store and forward teledermatology initially was published in 2012, and more recently one on use of mobile devices in 2017.
- teledermatology was added to the Specialist Registrar Training Program for trainee dermatologists in the UK from 2020. This will ensure that all new dermatologists coming through training will have adequate knowledge and, hopefully, experience in teledermatology for the future.
Saul Halpern, MD. Teledermatology in Europe. 8th World Congress of Teledermatology, Skin Imaging and AI in Skin diseases – November 2020