Skin-Cancer Spotting Apps Miss Their Marks

This is Scientific American 60-Second Health. I'm Katherine Harmon. Got a minute?
New smartphone apps now let you snap a picture and upload it for a skin cancer check.
Sure sounds a lot easier than trekking into the dermatologist, right?
But a new review of these apps finds that most of them are not very accurate.
Dermatologists uploaded 188 images of skin lesions to four different app-based services.
The apps, which are unregulated, mostly use algorithms to judge--often in less than a minute,
whether the spot is benign or something to get checked out.
Three of the four apps failed to catch at least one-in-three known cases of melanoma.
The apps also falsely identified plenty of benign growths as possibly cancerous.
The findings are in the journal JAMA Dermatology.
The fourth app, which did okay, actually used board-certified dermatologists to review images.
It was the most expensive at five bucks per assessment and took 24 hours.
So next time you're worried about a mole, don't use an app, get an ap--pointment…with a dermatologist.
Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American 60-Second Health. I'm Katherine Harmon.