About Miiskin

In the last 50 years, the use of UV-tanning beds and unhealthy tanning behaviour have caused a steep increase in skin cancer rates.

According to the latest stats an estimated 232,000 people globally get melanoma every year (GLOBOCAN, 2012 stats). Melanoma is one of the most aggressive types of skin cancer and currently 1.2 m Americans live with a melanoma diagnosis. The US accounts for about one third of global melanoma cases.

A personal history or a family history of melanoma increases the risk of getting a melanoma and so puts many more at risk. And the problem won’t go away, melanoma rates still continue to rise in many countries.

Luckily, there are things that can be done to remedy this challenge as survival rates increase greatly if a melanoma is caught early. So naturally, early detection of melanoma skin cancer is addressed in many ways. And technology is at the center of these efforts.

Some research has shown promising results in risk assessing moles and marks for melanoma through artificial intelligence or telemedicine using clinical high resolution images. And, as technology like this will be part of the future, we do monitor the progress closely.

The Miiskin app helps you structure a process around your skin examinations and allows you to take and keep photos of your skin and moles for monitoring over time. It also assists you in comparing photographs over time by allowing side-by-side viewing and parallel manipulation of the images. This makes it far easier for the user to identify differences between photos such as the appearance of a new mole, or a change to an existing mole. We are now also working on an innovative new Skin Mapping solution, where a computer also highlights all the moles and marks it can find to visually aid the user.

When we tell consumers about our feature set, they are often surprised by the simplicity – For most people it is tempting to think that it must be easy to risk assess a mole or do something clever with the photos taken with the app, but unfortunately it is far from simple to diagnose melanoma.

When we tell doctors and those people, who have been living with the challenge of keeping an eye on their skin, the simplicity of the Miiskin app is much welcomed. Knowing about the complexity, they realise that enabling an important behaviour can be a game changer in this space.

Skin self-examinations have been championed by experts over the last 30 years. And with the cost of taking a photo dropping to zero with the emergence of smartphones, photographing your skin and moles are recommended by more and more organisations.