Sudhir Polisetty's General Dermatology Blog: October 2013

There are currently more than 200 dermatology apps, which offer
benefits and drawbacks for patients and dermatologists alike.

Welcome back to my blog. The purpose of this blog has been to shine a light on interesting development and trends in the world of general dermatology so that patients and healthcare providers alike are better informed. When treating patients at The Dermatology Center in New Albany, Indiana, I have recently noticed patients using dermatology related mobile apps. A new report in JAMA Dermatology uncovered more than 200 dermatology apps, with half of them created for non-doctors. These apps offer benefits and drawbacks when it comes to addressing dermatology issues.

Popular dermatology related mobile apps include sunscreen recommendation guides, mole photo storage apps, and other tools to aid in the prevention and diagnosis of melanoma. Researchers divided the 229 dermatology-related apps into the following categories:

General dermatology reference (26.6%)
Self-surveillance/diagnosis (17.9%)
Disease guides (17%)
Educational aids (8.7%)
Sunscreen/UV recommendations (8.3%)
Calculators (5.2%)
Teledermatology (3.5%)

These categories represented less than 3% of the apps available in the marketplace: conference, journal, photograph storage/sharing, dermoscopy, pathology, and other. Researchers broke the 229 apps down into 209 unique apps and another 17 versions of existing apps on other operating systems. More than half of these apps are offered free of charge (51.1%) with the most expensive app costing $139.99. The identified target audiences were:

Patients (51.1%)
Health care providers (41%)
Both (7.9%)

While these apps increase access to medical knowledge, the study’s senior author, Dr. Robert Dellavelle, is concerned that people are getting the wrong information. He added that very few of these apps are clearly made by medical professional and that patients and doctors should maintain a healthy sense of skepticism when using these apps; especially ones that claim to help spot conditions such as skin cancer. Misinformation on these apps could delay a real diagnosis and jeopardize patient health. Ideally, these apps should not be used in place of visiting a dermatologist but patients should instead consult with a doctor before using the app’s data to make treatment decisions.

You can learn more about this study here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/us-health-dermatology-app-risk-idUSBRE98P0KN20130926

Thank you for reading,

Sudhir Polisetty

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