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

2 points| sarpdag | 5 months ago

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?

5 comments

order

BoredPositron|5 months ago

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

eimrine|5 months ago

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|5 months ago

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