According to the Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation, a whopping one in three cancers diagnosed worldwide is a skin cancer.
In Canada, over 80,000 cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year, with over 5,000 cases of deadly melanoma amongst those, and in the U.S in 2012, over 9,000 people died from melanomas of the skin.
How can you help protect yourself? Avoiding too much sun exposure by covering up and wearing sun screen can go a long way to maintaining regular prevention.
Some new tools are also on the market that can give you even further peace of mind.
SkinVision is an app for your cell phone that can help you detect changes in your skin that may be cancerous.
How does it work? SkinVision uses its algorithms to let you know if something is up. Users take a photo of a spot on their skin, and the app analyzes the spot, giving the user a recommendation.
For those who aren’t sure if some sun spots are staying the same or changing over time, SkinVision lets users archive their photos and keep track of changes as they may or may not happen.
In addition, users can share their photos with their doctor in order to help detect if changes are indeed occurring.
But is the app actually accurate? Of course, a visit to your doctor is always recommended when experiencing a health concern, but results show that SkinVision does have a pretty good eye.
According to the International Business Times, a study published in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology in 2013 discovered that SkinVision is over 80% accurate in detecting melanoma spots on human skin, which is actually more precise than a GP’s assessment.
The accuracy of the app does still fall short of the eye of a trained dermatologist, so it shouldn’t be relied upon for a clinical diagnosis.
It can, however, be a useful tool for some added info.
Curious? Click here to download the app.
Photo Credit: Postmodern Studio/Shutterstock
