Is it safe?
Many hospitals offer a teledermatology service to speed up patient diagnoses of skin conditions. Services are regularly monitored and show similar outcomes to face-to-face appointments.
If you’ve contacted your GP about a suspicious mole or lesion, they may take a photograph or you may have been asked to take a picture and send it to them by a secure messaging system which will be saved to your medical records and shared, with your permission, with a specialist dermatology team. If your GP has some concern that you may have melanoma, you may be referred for an urgent review. This does not mean you have a melanoma, it just means you will be reviewed urgently.
Teledermatology allows specialist dermatologists to quickly examine the photographic images and then only invite you to be seen face-to-face if there are any concerns or if the photographic image is not clear enough. A face-to-face appointment does not mean you have melanoma skin cancer. In fact, even if the area has been removed and examined under a microscope, only a small proportion end up being diagnosed as a melanoma. It is always better to get checked out early. Melanoma is easier to treat if picked up early.