SkinVision App Sounds the Alarm for Skin Cancer

Rob, age 66, had always had a back full of skin spots. Another spot wouldn’t have normally troubled him, but this one looked really odd. It was also itching and had started to bleed. Rob used his SkinVision app to take a picture of the irritated spot, which turned out to be a lifeline, because the spot was cancerous. “A few weeks later they surgically removed the spot.”

“Without SkinVision I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor, especially not during COVID-19,” Rob says.  “You have to know that my back is full of spots because I had severe sun burns in my youth.” It was only because he remembered a recommendation from his son that he used SkinVision. He installed the app on his smartphone, took a picture of the skin spot and it was immediately flagged as high risk. A day later he received a message from the SkinVision team which reminded and urged him to visit a healthcare professional for further assessment.

Two weeks later I was at the dermatologist’s, who had one look and immediately decided to remove it.

Shortly after its removal he received the troubling diagnosis: it was melanoma, the most aggressive and life threatening type of skin cancer.

Rob shared his experience with his brother Bram (71) and told him about the SkinVision app. As it turns out, Bram also happened to have a spot on his back that was concerning him. Like Rob, Bram then used SkinVision to check the spot and also received a high risk assessment with the message to urgently visit a doctor. His dermatologist ended up removing the skin spot on his back and another suspicious one on his shoulder. The results come in a few days later: the spot on his shoulder was malignant as well.

“The SkinVision app saved both my and my brother’s life”, says Rob.

Translated in English from: https://www.pzc.nl/zeeuws-nieuws/wat-bij-rob-begon-als-jeuk-bleek-huidkanker-ik-ben-door-de-app-gered-en-mijn-broer-ook~a8dbaaa5/