Ask HN: Why don't we have a mobile app to screen for skin cancer?

[sarpdag]

We already have the data, knowledge, and technology to build this. Why can’t I just use my phone camera to check if a spot on my skin looks concerning? It wouldn’t need to give a full diagnosis—just suggest whether I should see a doctor about a specific area.

If such apps exist, why aren’t they widely available?

[genezeta]

After maybe half a minute searching...

https://skinive.org/

https://www.skinvision.com/

https://dermie.ai/

[BoredPositron]

There are hundreds of them... some ai slops are free for some you pay 10 bucks to have a doctor look at it.

[eimrine]

Medical industry is the least developed among industries/sciences. There is too much of regulation/censourship, here is the quick list of problems that will inevitably happen:

- Someone exposes some CSAM picture to the app/smartphone and somehow the Government gets the fact of owning the photo. For example, Apple's neural network will have a big fun scanning images of somebody's skin.

- Someone sues the app because of false positive or false negative or just stupidity.

- Snoop-phone is a security nightmare because traditionally any app tries to steal and sell every piece of data possible, having anything medical on the snoop-phone means that any capitalist knows something which is supposed to be private.

- Some problems might happen because of race questions, I mean some issues related to skin color.

[JohnFen]

None of the potential problems you list have anything to do with how developed or regulated the medical industry is.

[eimrine]

It would be way more developed if less regulations. Pharmacists in drugstore used to cook drugs now they have no more skill than Pepsi salesperson. Tell me how regulation does not affect developing the industry.