Discover how a dermatology service was able to double the amount of patients they saw – and begin to end a waiting list challenge.

Last year, dermatology at NHS Borders had a spiralling waiting list of nearly 2,000 patients with an additional 65 referrals every week. Now, they are able to see twice as many patients as they were before and are starting to tackle the waiting list. Here’s how.

“I don’t think we’ll ever go back. I think teledermatology is the future, particularly for skin cancers”

Kirk  Lakie
General Manager for Planned Care Service, NHS Borders  

The problem

Dermatology at NHS Borders faced numerous challenges that many dermatology services will be familiar with:

·     A severe shortage of dermatologists

·     An increasing number of patients

·     Decreasing diagnostic confidence at primary care level

This was compounded by the location of Borders– a remote, largely rural area with a dispersed and ageing population of 115,000

The result? A spiralling dermatology waiting list of nearly 2,000 with an additional 65 referrals every week.

The solution

“We needed to redesign a way out of Border’s dermatology waiting  list crisis”

Sarah Reddie

Managing Director, Synaptik

Partnering with teledermatology platform Dermicus, Synaptik led a pilot study to introduce a teledermatology pathway at NHS Borders. A high resolution photo taken by a nurse and AI quality-checked would be sent to a remote dermatologist for review within 48 hours. The patient was then either discharged or booked in for an urgent excision or follow-up appointment.  

This meant a dermatologist could confidently assess and diagnose lesions without having to see the patient in person – a dramatic time-saving for both patient and practitioners.

Here’s how teledermatology started to tackle NHS Borders’ waiting list:

Better triaging – it quickly identified which patients could be discharged and which patients needed to be seen by a consultant. This  reduced the number of unnecessary
face-to-face consultations.  

Time saving – image capture appointments took much less time than traditional consultations.

See more patients – around 50 patients could be seen every day via teledermatology compared to around 24 patients in person.

The result was more patients getting seen, diagnosed, and discharged quicker.

“Teledermatology is an incredibly flexible solution that opens up new possibilities for dermatology services”


Dr Pawel Bogucki
Lead Dermatologist on the NHS Borders pilot study 

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