Fighting skin cancer with skinScan app - Belgrade-based TeleSkin wins Microsoft Award

TeleSkin has been recognized as a winner of the Microsoft Health Users Group (HUG) 2013 Innovation Awards, the Serbian company said in a release today.

TeleSkin’s flagship mobile product, skinScan, is a Windows 8 Mobile application that enables consumers to connect easily with a doctor to analyze moles and recognize first signs of skin cancer. Mobile users can easily scan moles or skin problems, get an instant analysis, and open a quick analysis path to doctors for an expert opinion. Users can engage in early skin cancer screening and monitoring and increase likelihood of early detection. For doctors and healthcare systems, skinScan leads to saving time, decreasing low-value visits, generating leads to doctors and improving public health through early skin cancer and melanoma detection.

- This award recognizes the great opportunity for both patients and healthcare networks to help reduce the impact of skin cancer through easily screening and tracking moles. With the help of advanced algorithms and a live expert doctor network, consumers get the quickest access to understanding their moles. Health Care networks integrating skinScan can significantly reduce the hidden costs of monitoring and follow-ups for skin cancer - said Sava Marinkovic, co-founder of TeleSkin.

Surveillance costs for monitoring skin cancer account for 20-30% of overall healthcare system costs, $22B in USA alone over 5 years. Currently, skin cancer’s median diagnosis is during late Stage 2 or Stage 3 and late stage diagnosis has not dropped significantly over the past 15 years. High costs for advanced stage cancer warrants increased emphasis on early detection.

The skinScan mobile platform contains highly developed image processing algorithms based on International Dermoscopy Society Standards for mole analysis.

Users can access the mobile app from the Microsoft Appstore, while Healthcare networks have their own backend for analysis.

- The 2013 Microsoft HUG Innovation Awards recognizes health organizations that are using technology to improve patient care and engagement, streamline processes and boost performance, as well as enable more informed decisions about health - said Steve Aylward, general manager of U.S. Commercial Health and Life Sciences, Microsoft.