New smartphone apps that purport to assess patients' skin lesions as cancer or not are unreliable, according to a new study. Katherine Harmon reports.
More 60-Second Health
Subscribe via iTunes
New smartphone apps now let you snap a picture and upload it for a skin cancer check. Sure sounds a lot easier than trekking into the dermatologist, right? But a new review of these apps finds that most of them are not very accurate.
Dermatologists uploaded 188 images of skin lesions to four different app-based services. The apps, which are unregulated, mostly use algorithms to judge?often in less than a minute?whether the spot is benign or something to get checked out. Three of the four apps failed to catch at least one-in-three known cases of melanoma. The apps also falsely identified plenty of benign growths as possibly cancerous. The findings are in the journal JAMA Dermatology. [Joel Wolf et al, Diagnostic Inaccuracy of Smartphone Applications for Melanoma Detection]
The fourth app, which did okay, actually used board-certified dermatologists to review images. It was the most expensive at five bucks per assessment and took 24 hours.
So next time you're worried about a mole, don?t use an app, get an ap?pointment?with a dermatologist.
?Katherine Harmon
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]
?
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=91410d2c1592e7fdffd8d2b0cf8a61fa
pineapple upside down cake free ecards flying car masters golf tournament the replacements how to hard boil eggs new nfl uniforms
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.