Dermassist

We have multiple resources that are used today such as websites like WebMD, Healthline, and Medical News Today, that aim to help the general public diagnose themselves with medical conditions through describing symptoms. However, due to their inability to provide individual help, these sites often lead to users being confused and overwhelmed by the possible conditions they could have and can cause unneeded anxiety in some cases.

In rural areas of the US, there are about 40 physicians per every 100,000 people. Urban areas don’t do much better at around 53 physicians for every 100,000 people. One in three Americans are affected by skin diseases and since 2009, patient wait times for dermatology appointments have increased by 46 percent. This increase from 22 to 32 days of wait time could worsen a patient's condition by the time they get to meet with their doctor.

Additionally, with the high costs of healthcare insurance, more and more patients are choosing to not seek help from physicians in worries that their conditions are benign. This is a global issue as well. Therefore, it is imperative that we address these issues and utilize technology to do so.

So, we’ve decided to create Dermassist, an app that diagnoses an individual’s skin conditions, such as lesions, skin cancers, or other diseases. Through images and questions using Artificial Intelligence. Users will either upload an image or, if they are not comfortable, they can answer a few questions about their symptoms. The app will give a description of the diagnosis and treatments, and also provide an on-call doctor who will be able to answer any questions via chat. We've created a prototype of our app using JustInMind in order to visualize the process.

The many advantages of this app include early detection in order to prevent further complications within the skin disease as it recognizes conditions in a timely manner. This also decreases physician workload. Our app is user-friendly and it contributes to less overall expenses in regards to healthcare.

There are multiple ways for us to reach our target audience. The app can be uploaded to the App Store or the Google Play Store in order to provide access to the general public, especially those in rural or under-resourced areas. We could also partner with hospitals such that they could use the app as a second opinion or for patients who need clarification prior to making appointments. This can relieve stress in some cases, or provide an outline for doctors to speed up their process in person.

Of course there are some challenges and limitations to this idea. One major concern for users could be privacy and HIPAA compliance. We plan to address this by having data stored anonymously without users being required to enter any personal information. If we plan to partner with hospitals, we could use their systems to store our data. Additionally, like all AI algorithms there are the issues of bias. We can mitigate this issue by training and testing our algorithm with a dataset that represents different skin colors, skin types and more.

Overall, Dermassist is not only a great business venture but has the possibility to save thousands of people from fatal skin diseases because it would improve health equity.