This is ML. I guess AI term can apply here but I think it's a bit disingenuous to advertise as such. People will conflate the term with llm chat bots.
https://skin-analytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Artifi...
AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
11–20 of 91 posts
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#12Anecdotally, when I had a potential skin cancer checked at a London hospital they were completely ill-prepared.
When I came back to Australia, it was checked and immediately removed as an obvious melanoma.
Perhaps the idea of Comparative Advantage also applies to healthcare between countries with natural variances to types of disease?
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#13Why go to the hospital at all? Just take the photo at home.
Because you don't know what the lighting is, what the sensor is, and what kind of shit the camera app and ISP are doing to the image without telling you
I recently tried to show some images to a vet. Something in my phone fucked up the amount of red in the image, making them useless (guess what, figuring out how much blood is present is pretty important for medical applications)
Probably at some point we will all have a separate medical camera with specified response and with a specified led illuminator. Apple will probably get their phone certified in some medical camera mode. Right now I don't think phone cameras can be trusted
Not all applications need accurate colour, (no idea about cancer checks) but some really do.
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#14> The hospital gets about 7,000 urgent skin cancer referrals each year, but only 5% turn out to be cancer.
It seems to be that you could be doing a _much_ better job of filtering this pipeline before it gets to this point. How can so many _urgent_ cases end up being negative?
They're using AI to solve a problem that probably shouldn't exist.
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#15Why go to the hospital at all? Just take the photo at home.
As someone with a phenotype more subject to skin cancer, I have been using an app called SkinVision for years. From my anecdotal experience it tends to flag the same moles as dermatologists do, and they have actual dermatologists review images where the model has low confidence, so overall pretty happy with it. Note that I am not affiliated with them in any way.
Looks like it’s not available in the US unfortunately.
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#16> The hospital gets about 7,000 urgent skin cancer referrals each year, but only 5% turn out to be cancer. It seems to be that you could be doing a _much_ better job of filtering this pipeline before it gets to this point. How can so many _urgent_ cases end up being negative? They're using AI to solve a problem that probably shouldn't exist.
The referral is just because a non expert can't be sure. The cost of the referral is relatively small, but the cost of getting it wrong is large.
Someone I know recently had a referral - it's pretty light touch, you just get a prompt appointment, and they do a minor op to remove the mole, and send it to the lab for testing. Luckily in their case, it wasn't cancer. But nothing in the process seemed weird, it was just the way of the GP escalating it because they couldn't be sure. Hypothetically, if the AI had been able to diagnose with higher certainty than the GP, all of this could have been avoided, so definitely room for improvement.
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#17> The hospital gets about 7,000 urgent skin cancer referrals each year, but only 5% turn out to be cancer. It seems to be that you could be doing a _much_ better job of filtering this pipeline before it gets to this point. How can so many _urgent_ cases end up being negative? They're using AI to solve a problem that probably shouldn't exist.
And why are skin cancers being referred to a hospital at all?
Personal experience in the US... treatment can be done on the spot at the primary dermatologist's office (curettage usually) or referred either to a Mohs specialist or a plastic surgeon (both of whom usually treat at their office). Short of a melanoma that's progressed/metastasized, I don't think I've ever heard of a skin cancer being treated at a hospital (not saying it doesn't happen, only that that would be an exception, based on personal/family/friend experiences).
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#1899% accuracy in diagnosing benign case This is meaningless. The only thing that matters in this kind of application is false negative rate at some acceptable false positive rate. I assume whoever is working on this knows that, so this is mostly a criticism of the article. That said, this is a horrible use of AI.
What do you mean by this being a "horrible" use of AI? (Although as another commenter has mentioned, this should more properly be called ML).
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#19Why go to the hospital at all? Just take the photo at home.
4 years ago I had my partner take photos of moles that had changed colour on my back. I used the MySkinDoctor app https://www.myskindoctor.co.uk/ to send them to my consultant dermatologist (who, at the time, I had never met -- having just moved to a new area). Upon review they arranged for an in-person appointment and I was seen within a week or so. All through the NHS.
So yes, taking the photo at home is perfectly doable. I still went to hospital though.
Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital
#20> The hospital gets about 7,000 urgent skin cancer referrals each year, but only 5% turn out to be cancer. It seems to be that you could be doing a _much_ better job of filtering this pipeline before it gets to this point. How can so many _urgent_ cases end up being negative? They're using AI to solve a problem that probably shouldn't exist.
The referral is just because a non expert can't be sure. The cost of the referral is relatively small, but the cost of getting it wrong is large. Someone I know recently had a referral - it's pretty light touch, you just get a prompt appointment, and they do a minor op to remove the mole, and send it to the lab for testing. Luckily in their case, it wasn't cancer. But nothing in the process seemed weird, it was just…
Do all cases in the UK start with a GP? No ability to go straight to a dermatologist? And are all dermatologists based out of hospitals?
In the US, we'd just go straight to a dermatologist, who would either remove it on the spot, or for a location that's liable to scar badly, refer to a specialist surgeon. For somebody fair skinned with lots of sun damage like myself, it's an annual "ritual".