Asynchronous telemedical care in rural areas

In light of the experiences of the COVID pandemic, there is an increasing desire among General Practioners to be able to communicate with colleagues and/or patients via data protection-compliant messaging apps.
Such asynchronous, i.e. time-delayed, telemedicine approaches have the advantage that the communication partners do not have to be available at the same time. If questions are discussed between doctors regarding a patient's consultation and this consultation is supplemented by a specific form (referral form), efficiency is also increased.
The ASTRaL project looks at specific asynchronous consultations with rheumatologists, ophthalmologists and dermatologists.
The aim of the project is to evaluate asynchronous telemedicine procedures that are implemented to improve access to specialized care in rural areas. The participating research practices will be equipped with hardware and software via which communication between the respective specialties can take place in compliance with data protection regulations.
General Practionioners will be able to send questions to specialists in the fields of rheumatology and dermatology using images and referral forms. For the telemedical application in ophthalmology, it is planned that a medical assistant will be trained on an optical coherence tomography device so that they can operate the device for routine examinations, such as measuring eye pressure, and send the corresponding images to the ophthalmologists.