Tell us about yourself! What specialty are you in? What's your clinical interest?

My name is Noha, dermatology registrar. I am interested in dermatological skin disease as well as the psychological impact it has on our patients. My other related interests are medical education and bridging the gap between providing healthcare and technology.

When and how did you start using Pando?

I introduced the app to our dermatology department in June 2018 after it was approved by use at my trust and it is now a regular tool that we use as an adjunct to delivering patient care; especially when oncall as we are non resident and we cover multiple sites.

Did you have any difficulty getting started? How is it going now?

Initially as it was a relatively new app not all colleagues were familiar with its use which limited how often it was used. However this is no longer an issue and is widely used within the trust. Other concerns raised by some colleagues included governance related issues which have been dealt with by the Pando team and trust governance department.

In what way has Pando benefited the care you can deliver for patients?

Absolutely. I have collected data over 2 week 'trial periods' one year apart where we have documented each time the app was used. On further data analysis we do know that our use of the app has changed patient pathways, for instance led to a patient being sent home from A+E and booked into an outpatient emergency clinic and other who were discharged with advice.

Any specific examples?

For example a child attended A+E with blistering on the fingers. After discussion with the medical team and on reviewing the images, urgent outpatient follow up was arranged instead. This does avoid patients spending hours in A+E unnecessarily with no specialty input.

What should we do next with Pando?

Perhaps venturing into teledermatology and helping bridge the gap between health care and technology further. For example assisting with creation of virtual clinics as many patients do not really need to attend physically and can get their prescriptions repeated after an online consultation.