51087 UtahDERM: Implementing a Digital Dermatology Education Platform

Introduction: Patients often present to clinicians who may not know how to accurately identify and diagnose dermatologic conditions.To address this educational gap, the University of Utah Department of Dermatology and Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library digitized 15,000 photographs of both pediatric and adult dermatologic cases donated by Dr. Leonard Swinyer.This report summarizes the development and challenges of the UtahDERM (Dermatology Education Resources & Modules) project, an open-access and searchable database for displaying a vast repository of clinical images.Methods: Approximately 15,000 slides with no patient identifiers were digitized to be placed online in an image viewer.Dermatologists collaborated in applying clinical characteristics (e.g., body location, distribution, secondary change, Fitzpatrick type) to the images using Google Forms, and reviewed the assigned diagnoses for accuracy.The UtahDERM Editor-in-Chief performs a final review and approves of the diagnoses and characteristics.Website usage data was collected via Google Analytics.Results: UtahDERM's Image Viewer is currently in an alpha release stage, allowing for browsing by diagnosis, filtering by characteristics, and textbook chapters.The website received 13,000 views with 6,800 new users from primarily U.S (5,400), Canada (308), and UK (254) from 2022-2023.Challenges included utilizing Google Forms for large scale data collection, mitigating reviewer discrepancies in clinical characteristics, and identifying willing reviewers.Conclusion/Discussion: UtahDERM's Image Viewer is a promising step in enhancing dermatological education but faces challenges in data collection, slide categorization, and reviewer recruitment.Ongoing refinement is necessary to unlock its full potential, and to provide an organizational framework for future open-source largescale image repositories.