Secure texting apps can be used for sending all types of messages—whether text, photo or video based. There are a myriad of situations where sharing a photo of a wound or injury allows clinicians and physicians to coordinate care with greater speed and precision.

The four situations outlined below are prime examples of times when sharing photos via secure texting aids the care delivery process.
 

The physician assistant & surgeon

Recovering patients require frequent check-ups, particularly after undergoing invasive surgeries. To ease this process, physician assistants (PAs) can share photos of surgical lacerations and the like to busy surgeons via their secure texting mobile app. Proximity between the PAs and surgeons involved is not necessary to share, review, highlight and make decisions based on sensitive PHI.
 

Residents

A new resident confronts a lesion that is unfamiliar. Rather than flipping through medical texts or scouring the internet, the new practitioner can snap a photo and consult a fellow physician or specialist instantly. This would make arriving at a diagnosis for even the rarest of diseases considerably quicker.
 

In the ER

When a patient arrives in a crowded ER with a severe injury, time is of the essence. Although triage should ideally happen immediately, most times physicians and surgeons cannot see the patient at the appropriate time. Nurses can support them by sending photos of ER patients’ wounds and injuries within a secure texting app. Physicians can then use those photos to determine immediacy of care.
 

Across the network

A physician has heard about a potential local outbreak of a disease but isn’t sure how the symptoms present visually. He/she may want to confer with other practitioners who have seen patients with similar symptom clusters by sending a secure photo message. This increased access to medical knowledge could be the key to identifying epidemics.

 
How can/has photo messaging improve your care process? Share your experiences in the comments below!