An app your patients can trust

It’s important to stay vigilant to changes in skin lesions. People should regularly examine their skin to become familiar with their usual moles, freckles, and other spots. It’s very useful to use photographs to keep a record of the skin’s appearance and this is facilitated by mobile apps. Changes to moles, such as changing shape or colour, growing in size, crusting, itching, bleeding, or the appearance of new moles or scaly spots, could be a warning sign of skin cancer. If in doubt, see your doctor.

Personal vigilance is important in monitoring the skin for new and changing moles. Many Dermatologists including myself have long advocated the use of photographic records for ongoing monitoring. This has become easier and cheaper with the widespread use of cameras and Apps (such as Miiskin) on personal phones, tablets and computers. New and changing moles, such as changing shape, size and colour and any crusting, itching or bleeding, are what to watch out for and report to your doctor.

The Miiskin app is a great way to encourage people to monitor their own skin regularly, to help track any changes which could be worrying. If any changes are noticed, the user can then visit their dermatologist for a medical assessment.

Malignant Melanoma cases are still on the rise. Most often, the best person to notice any changes in your skin is you. Everything that can help make people attentive to new moles and changes in old moles is therefore welcome. Miiskin’s apps are a help in monitoring moles and seem to be both useful and sensible. The apps allow the user to systematically follow any brown spot in a simple and straightforward manner. The next logical step would be to give physicians access to the images to provide the important new dimension of “evolution over time” to the medical decision. It is very positive and inspires confidence that Miiskin’s apps do not try to assess whether any given spot could be malignant or not – but leave physicians to do the assessments based on a complete assessment of the spot as well as the patient.

As a family doctor, I joined this project in passion, since I have been lacking a tool like this for years. In my practice, I see many people with skin concerns, people with a high risk of developing melanoma (like white males age 50+) or people that have been through a melanoma treatment. They have often been told to keep an eye on their moles without getting further instructions on how. Miiskin is a perfect tool to keep an eye on your irregular moles or moles that you have been told to watch. It is now also officially recommended to use photos to monitor concerning moles by UpToDate.com – One of the largest evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resources in the world.