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AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

bbc.com

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Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#31

Post by Scoundreller »

qq66 wrote: post #24
ircshotty wrote: post #12

Anecdotally, 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?

Sadly, a friend of mine died from this type of problem. He traveled from Ghana to Jordan and fell ill in Jordan, the Jordanian doctors didn't diagnose it as malaria in time to save him because Jordan doesn't have malaria. I'm sure it would have been obvious to a Ghanaian doctor.

Friend did a lot of work in Africa. Got back to the US and starts getting symptomatic and says to himself “I think I got malaria”.

Goes to the biggest university hospital nearby he can find.

Was initially dismissed but waited it out for the infectious diseases specialist and they quickly agreed with his self-diagnosis.

They kept them in hospital for a few days so a parade of clinical students/residents could come by for the specialist to say: “this man has malaria”

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#32

Post by graemep »

darrenf wrote: post #19
xenospn wrote: post #2

Why 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…

I develop the backend for that. Nice to hear it worked well for you.

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#33

Post by Spooky23 »

andy99 wrote: post #7

99% 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.

It’s really all about the protocol. AI tends to spot things that doctors don’t, and vice versa. Dermatology is also an area being pillaged by private equity and access is poor for many people.

I lost my wife to melanoma. She noticed a lesion within days of it appearing, and a doctor saw it within 48 hours and felt it was benign. My wife didn’t accept it and had a plastic surgeon remove it and biopsy, then had a margin removed by surgical oncologist, the standard of care at the time. It came back as a brain tumor 4 years later and she was gone in 6 months, even with the incredible advancements today.

So I’d hold the position strongly that anything that improves overall detection rates and access to care is incredibly important and will save lives. Weeks matter with melanoma. Today with immunotherapy Molly would be fine. But if she hadn’t advocated and gotten the original thing removed, it would have cost her 4 important years.

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#34

Post by stubish »

xenospn wrote: post #2

Why go to the hospital at all? Just take the photo at home.

One of the problems with these sorts of machine learning applications, including this exact use case elsewhere, is that they have been extremely sensitive to the imaging equipment used. Train it on a dataset of images from one source and it is only accurate on images from that source. Possibly only accurate on images from the exact same device. For home use, it needs a huge training set of images taken by all sorts of devices in all sorts of lighting conditions. And then the system will need to be improved until the error rates become useful.

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#36

Post by ghaff »

Scoundreller wrote: post #31
qq66 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, a friend of mine died from this type of problem. He traveled from Ghana to Jordan and fell ill in Jordan, the Jordanian doctors didn't diagnose it as malaria in time to save him because Jordan doesn't have malaria. I'm sure it would have been obvious to a Ghanaian doctor.

Friend did a lot of work in Africa. Got back to the US and starts getting symptomatic and says to himself “I think I got malaria”. Goes to the biggest university hospital nearby he can find. Was initially dismissed but waited it out for the infectious diseases specialist and they quickly agreed with his self-diagnosis. They kept them in hospital for a few days so a parade of clinical students/residents could come by…

I came back from Bali and shortly after came down with a really high fever when I was on vacation in Maine. When I got home week later called my primary as I was still running a bit of a fever and got blood work which was pretty bad. Went to ER and my primary care figured it was something tick related. The infectious disease guy on call immediately identified as Dengue Fever. At the end, including sending blood to the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris I spent something south of $1K to get told I’d recover on my own—the Paris tests came back like weeks later—and there really wasn’t much they could do.

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#37

Post by asdefghyk »

ircshotty wrote: post #12

Anecdotally, 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?

Australia, Queensland, Brisbane has the highest incidence of skin cancer in World. So Drs and dermatologists would have more experience detecting it here. UV is probably much less intense in England . This link graph shows skin cancer is over 2x in Australia https://www.statista.com/statistics/1032114/countries-with-t...

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#38

Post by tomcam »

Spooky23 wrote: post #33
andy99 wrote: post #7

99% 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.

It’s really all about the protocol. AI tends to spot things that doctors don’t, and vice versa. Dermatology is also an area being pillaged by private equity and access is poor for many people. I lost my wife to melanoma. She noticed a lesion within days of it appearing, and a doctor saw it within 48 hours and felt it was benign. My wife didn’t accept it and had a plastic surgeon remove it and biopsy, then had a margi…

So sorry, brother.

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#39

Post by asdefghyk »

Spooky23 wrote: post #33
andy99 wrote: post #7

99% 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.

It’s really all about the protocol. AI tends to spot things that doctors don’t, and vice versa. Dermatology is also an area being pillaged by private equity and access is poor for many people. I lost my wife to melanoma. She noticed a lesion within days of it appearing, and a doctor saw it within 48 hours and felt it was benign. My wife didn’t accept it and had a plastic surgeon remove it and biopsy, then had a margi…

I've been told the only way to be sure if skin cancer or not , is a biopsy. I also have been told ... not skin cancer... but Dr decided to send me to a dermatologist. Is thing he said when say it .. is looks like skin cancer ... lets take a biopsy now ... to check . It was skin cancer ... a BCC

Re: AI used for skin cancer checks at London hospital

#40

Post by femto »

frereubu wrote: post #23
ircshotty wrote: post #12

Anecdotally, 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?

Being a pasty Brit, going to Australia was a real eye opener in how much more on the ball they were about skin cancer, not just in medical terms but culturally. We're getting better here (I was there more than a decade ago) but it's still seen as quite amusing when people get sunburnt here.

Awareness started in the 1980s in Australia with Sid the Seagull:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGgn5nwYtj0

https://www.abc.net.au/btn/classroom/sun-safety-campaign/103...

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