Getting your skin professionally checked once a year, alongside conducting self-checks at home every few months is the best way to stay atop of your skin health. Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, which makes it crucial for you to understand when things have changed with your skin.
In Canada, a team of technologists are currently developing artificial intelligence technology to help streamline the detection process and help identify any potentially nasty looking spots on the skin. The medical technology start-up who is spearheading this research is called Skinopathy.
According to the Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation, there are more new cases of skin cancer each year than the number of breast, prostate, lung and colon cancer combined. In fact, one in every three cancers diagnosed worldwide is skin cancer — 80-90% of which are caused by ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
With this in mind, Skinopathy is in the process of developing a new technology that could help take some of the burden off of the medical system in Canada, which according to EIN Presswire, spent over $2 billion on costs associated with skin and subcutaneous tissue diseases like melanoma in 2010.
When the technology is ready, it will eventually live in an app designed by Skinopathy and allow users to quickly and reliably examine potential risks of skin cancer while also connecting them to Canadian physicians for further consultation. This technology will also allow users to detect skin cancers and other skin diseases before it becomes of serious concern.
According to EIN Presswire, this service will be integrated directly with the Canadian provincial healthcare systems, so patients won’t face any additional charges for using the technology. While this technology is being created for the healthcare system in Canada, should it prove successful there, we could see similar technologies integrated into the Australian healthcare system eventually.
If you’re keen to try this technology now, there is a similar app called SkinVision, which allows you to check spots on your skin or keep track of any changes to certain marks. The app then analyses your photo and gives you an instant risk assessment and advice on what you should do next including whether you should see a doctor or not. Research into SkinVision shows it can detect 95% of skin cancers.