Medical photography: time savings and data security with a dedicated smartphone application (Kuster et al. 2021)

The Pixacare smartphone application reduces medical photography acquisition time in plastic surgery by a factor of 3.77 (69 seconds versus 259 seconds with the conventional method), saving 3 minutes and 10 seconds per patient while ensuring appropriate clinical data security.

Publication

Study published in Annales de Chirurgie Plastique Esthétique (Elsevier), June 2021, Volume 66, Issue 3, pages 217 to 222. Access the publication.

Introduction

Medical photography is omnipresent in plastic surgery and provides essential information for the patient record. Smartphones have become the preferred acquisition tool, but they raise concerns about clinical data security. In addition, photograph management often remains manual and time-consuming.

The Pixacare software suite was designed to address this need securely. It includes three components:

• A mobile application for photographic acquisition
• A web application for document management
• An ISO 27001-certified clinical data hosting infrastructure

The objective of the study was to quantify the time saved by the Pixacare application during photographic data acquisition.

Materials and methods

A prospective, single-center study was conducted in two successive phases to measure acquisition times with the conventional method and then with the Pixacare mobile application.

Protocol characteristics:

• 89 patients per phase, recruited during plastic and maxillofacial surgery consultations
• 4 surgeons involved
• Comparable patient numbers and average photographs per patient for each surgeon across both phases
• Acquisition time measured from the moment the photograph was taken to its integration into the patient record

Results

Photographic data acquisition time was reduced by a factor of 3.77 with the Pixacare application (p < 0.001). Key findings are:

• Mean time with conventional method: 259 seconds per patient
• Mean time with Pixacare application: 69 seconds per patient
• Time saved: 3 minutes and 10 seconds per patient
• Statistical significance: p < 0.001

Conclusion

The Pixacare software suite delivers significant time savings to the surgeon while ensuring appropriate clinical data security. This study does not account for the additional time saved through medical meeting preparation, the benefits of photograph sharing between healthcare professionals, or the efficiency of the integrated secure messaging system.

Keywords

Medical photography, plastic surgery, smartphone application, clinical data security, patient record, time efficiency