ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the US, but the dermatology specialty’s capacity for skin-checks can’t meet demand. SquareMind has developed a robot for whole-body dermoscopic skin imaging, to increase clinical efficiency and consistency, and to enable longitudinal tracking.
AI and robotics have raised the level of precision and efficiency for many surgical and diagnostics specialties, but until Paris-based SquareMind came along, dermatologists enjoyed innovation only in the form of AI as an adjunct to their own visual assessment of abnormal sightings on the skin. The dermatology specialty has a problem, however, in keeping up with the number of patients who should be screened for skin cancer, based on such factors as age, skin and eye color, skin exposure (especially severe sunburns in childhood), occupational exposure to certain chemicals, and a family history of skin cancer.
Across these risk factors, about 100 million people in the US should be screened, but according to a study (by lead authors N. Lakhani and M. Saraiya, and published in Preventive Medicine in 2014) only 24% have ever had a total body skin examination. To anyone who’s ever had to reschedule a skin cancer screening appointment they’ve waited many months for only to add several months more to the wait, it’s obvious there aren’t enough dermatologists to serve the demand.
