Smartphone Apps No Match for Identifying Amelanotic Melanoma

It’s not recent, but a 2012 research study concluded that smartphone apps that are supposed to help people with identifying suspicious moles and growths actually are unreliable. In turn, people delay getting treatment for something. And as we all know, particularly with melanoma, delays are not a good thing.

The study, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a well-respected institution in the United States, noted that “three out of four of the apps said 30 per cent of cancerous skin lesions were of no concern”. They used images of 60 melanomas and 128 benign skin lesions and 18 of those melanomas were diagnosed as benign.

I’m going to hazard a guess that an amelanotic nodular melanoma lesion was part of the 18 incorrectly identified lesions, because a New Zealand doctor quoted in the article said two of the most aggressive and deadly types of skin cancer were the nodular or amelanotic melanomas which were likely to be missed by the apps.

“These will fool many of the applications based on algorithms in that they are often very symmetrical in shape and often only one colour,” he said.

Let’s face it, we rely on our smartphones and the apps for keeping our lives organized, functional, and interesting. But we probably shouldn’t be trying to replace the trained professionals who help keep us healthy. While the thought behind the apps is great – providing information to help people who should go to the doctor – it likely is resulting in at least a few people who really need to go get their weird spot checked out to be reassured by a false negative. I admit, I even fell for this when I went online and looked up “pink skin spot” online. All of the websites for detecting “normal” skin cancer said my spot was benign. I didn’t go immediately to the dermatologist because I was reassured by the false negative.

For the generations younger than me, they probably trust their smartphone apps a lot more than I do. (Maybe because I know so many programmers…) I know there are bugs, but when you think the entire collective wisdom of the internet backs up the results; well, let’s just say that I know there aren’t as many people lucky as me who caught their amelanotic nodular melanoma as early as I did. And that’s a really sobering thought because of how aggressive this form of skin cancer is.

Upshot, even though there are a lot of good tools and a ton of information out there that is designed to help you identify that weird spot on your skin; take the time to go to a real-life dermatologist to get the final say.