Throughout my progress in the Independent Study and Mentorship course, I have been able to determine my primary topic I would like to further research. With this being said, I decided to integrate the concept of tele-dermatology into my Original Work/Final Project. With this being said I researched an article located on PubMed titled “A Smartphone Application to Improve the Precision of Biopsy Site Identification: A Proof-of-Concept Study.” The research article discussed the reliance on free-text entries to indicate biopsy sites in Dermatology. This form of documentation is prone to user error which can cause wrong-site follow-up surgery. On occasion, surgeons have difficulty identifying previous biopsy sites in their records. Prior to the creation of the application, biopsy sites are permanently recorded. These reports rely on text descriptions of the anatomical sites given by the provider. Assistants of the primary Dermatologist are often delegated to complete the pathology report and they unfortunately can oftentimes be unfamiliar with complex terminology. “RightSite” provides suggested anatomical site descriptors with a graphical user interface. Conclusively, I found this research article helpful in understanding the technicalities involved in creating a smartphone application which I would like to possibly integrate into the Independent Study and Mentorship Program Final Work. Prior to reading this article, I was not knowledgeable in terms of the tools required to create it (EX: React Native). With this being said, I think it will be important to learn/research how to utilize these systems and understand their inner workings. This knowledge will make the process of creating a smartphone application simple.
