Medical Selfies: Emotional Impacts and Practical Challenges
This addresses usability and emotional barriers in mobile teledermatology for patients, though it is incremental as it builds on existing diagnostic accuracy research.
The study investigated the emotional and practical challenges patients face when taking medical selfies for skin lesion screening, finding that participants had difficulties with certain body parts and expressed privacy concerns and emotional triggers.
Medical images taken with mobile phones by patients, i.e. medical selfies, allow screening, monitoring and diagnosis of skin lesions. While mobile teledermatology can provide good diagnostic accuracy for skin tumours, there is little research about emotional and physical aspects when taking medical selfies of body parts. We conducted a survey with 100 participants and a qualitative study with twelve participants, in which they took images of eight body parts including intimate areas. Participants had difficulties taking medical selfies of their shoulder blades and buttocks. For the genitals, they prefer to visit a doctor rather than sending images. Taking the images triggered privacy concerns, memories of past experiences with body parts and raised awareness of the bodily medical state. We present recommendations for the design of mobile apps to address the usability and emotional impacts of taking medical selfies.