Melanoma misdiagnosis? Yep, there's an app for that

Based on an image from the NCI.

Most of the controversy that has erupted over smartphone apps has focused on things like the sharing of personal information and the presence of malware. But the wild-west craziness of the app world apparently extends to the medical arena, where the Food and Drug Administration is still pondering if and how to regulate smartphone software that interacts with medical devices. The FCC has been forced to act, fining app makers who claimed that their software could treat acne simply by turning the smartphone screen a specific color.

That latter tidbit is cited as a cause of concern in a new article in JAMA Dermatology that looks at another area of medicine with "an app for that": melanoma diagnosis. Apparently, there are over half a dozen apps that claim to be able to tell you whether an oddly colored patch on your skin is worrisome enough that you should see a doctor. But the authors' testing of the apps suggests that relying on a real, live dermatologist remains the way to go.

Rather than slaving away in the review labs of a tech website, our intrepid app testers were all in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. As such, they had access to resources that could really put the software to the test: a set of photos taken of suspicious skin lesions, which were later removed and examined in detail by members on the hospital staff. Thus, they could link the images (60 melanomas and 128 benign growths) fed to the apps with a definitive diagnosis.