Do you have a mole you’re unsure about? A skin blemish that’s changing colour or appearing to grow in size?
When you live in Perth, the sunniest city on the planet – 8 hours of sun a day on average – you have to think about these things. Seriously.
Fortunately, a Perth-based startup has come up with a solution to make it easy to check potential skin cancers, easily and privately.
Scanoma is a teledermatology platform that checks your moles, calculates your skin cancer risk, and connects you with trained dermatologists for a professional second opinion.
The goal is to spread more awareness around skin cancer and encourage potential at-risk patients to have their skin checked regularly, and early.
How does it work?
Patients take a picture of their skin lesion, and computer vision technology compares it with concerning images and provides an initial idea of the level of concern.
The patients then answer a medical questionnaire and information about their particular situation and submit their image and information from the comfort and privacy of their home using either (iPhone, Android, iPad) to licensed dermatologists on the scanoma platform.
A licensed doctor then examines the patient’s file and provides diagnosis and guidance, usually within minutes. The system keeps improving as more doctors diagnose more images.
Scanoma also runs a blog where they post well-researched and sourced articles about the latest news and information regarding skin cancer https://www.scanoma.com/blog.
Growth
Scanoma has been enjoying a profitable 37% growth period over the past 3 months, with a 56% growth in users. They are 100% bootstrapped, yet have been approved by the TGA as a medical device.
Their apps are constantly in the top 100 chart of medical apps in Australia, and they have expanded into international markets (UK, US). They are also thinking about expanding into other skin conditions (not just moles) and are excited things about the tele-health dimension of the app.
Startup News spoke with founder Al Nouaman Mekouar:
“I had some university background in computer science but I’m self-taught in machine learning/AI skills and multiple languages and frameworks since then. I’ve also developed and published other apps on the App Store which were useful learning experiences and a good base for building the scanoma app.”
“The data science part of the project was the most challenging part of the build. Collecting quality skin cancer data and images, preparing and cleaning the data, and making sure the different devices/cameras produce images for accurate analysis by the app and by physicians.”
The feedback from users is one of the nicest things, that keeps the company moving forward, Al Nouaman says.
Here’s some feedback from a recent user:
Hello, Just wanted to say thank you for this app! A mole on my husband’s head was labelled 100% concerning in your app, which prompted him to get it looked at. Turns out he had stage 1 melanoma. Thankfully he was able to get it removed before it spread anywhere. I have been spreading the word about Scanoma after a couple of friends and family members asked what made him get the mole checked. Thanks again, we are so grateful!!!
Happy User
Scanoma is looking to expand their tele-health platform to more skin conditions (bites, pimples, etc.) and possibly integrating with medical practices here in Australia with a referral system.
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For more: https://www.scanoma.com/
