The Skin Scan app is a simple premise: point your iPhone camera at a spot and it's system will analyse the picture for likelihoods of potentially harmful skin blemishes.
This is not the first time an app has been used for medical advice and services. We've seen doctors beginning to walk around with an iPad; images of brain scans and X-rays automatically streamed to them. We've seen the novel, but slightly amateur efforts of using the iPhone's torch and camera to act as a pulse monitor. Not to mention the copious numbers of free apps available to input an ailment and receive an instant list of possible causes, complete with full symptoms and remedies.
This is definitely a welcome step forward for medicine and health care. Waiting lists continue to grow, doctors continue to work longer and longer hours. It's not unknown to wait a week for an appointment with your doctor. So such apps can only seek to add reassurance on health issues which play on our minds.
However there is a definite negative: Would you trust an app to properly diagnose a cancer? I know I wouldn't. As we become increasingly more reliant on the wealth of knowledge on the internet, I can't help but feel we lose touch with real life somewhat. How many case studies will we hear of in the next decades of how someone had a pain or a problem, which later developed into something life threatening. They didn't go to the doctor because an iPhone diagnosis app told them it was a common problem that would go away on its own.
The underlying truth is that although these medical apps are useful, they are by no means a replacement for a qualified health professional. Men are bad enough to get to go to the doctors without adding further excuses to put off a full examination after only an iPhone app search.
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