This post was written by Ariela Mabourkh, a social media expert at Betterfly.com. Betterfly is the fast and easy way to find estheticians, makeup artists and other personal service providers in your local area.
These days, people use their Smartphones for so much more than sheer communication. Directions, recipes, entertainment – you name it, a Smartphone can do it. My phone is my weather predictor, music player, and funds manager all rolled into one. But a new app has been developed for the iPhone that surpasses all prior ranges of functionality: Skin Scan, funded by Seedmoney, is a medical app that allows the user to track and analyze skin lesions, and to use the results to gauge whether a lesion has potential to be cancerous. How does it work? It says it the app uses the highest level of technology and the advice of dermatologists to detect whether the shape of a lesion indicates that it can be cancerous. It also allows you to keep track of your potentially malignant moles to see if they’re growing in a harmful way.
My first reaction to reading about this app was serious skepticism. How can an app be a trustworthy tool for measuring the likelihood of cancer? I mean, we’re talking life or death here. I’m not sure if I would trust a $4.99 cell phone application developed in Romania to make an informed decision about my future encounters with cancer. But the app does disclaim to replace professional medical care, which is obviously important in protecting itself from getting into trouble. And it places more emphasis on archiving lesions as they develop than analyzing the moles themselves for cancer potentiality. The more I thought about it, the more I could see the advantages of such a technology. It has the ability to chronicle the growth and development of lesions with much more preciseness than the human eye. And as long as a person understands that this app isn’t a replacement of a visit to the dermatologist, I think it’s a great idea.
What are your thoughts on the SkinScan or teledermatology in general? Â Share in Comments, on Facebook, or via Twitter! Â