Skin cancer diagnosis apps are unreliable

Smartphone apps used as ‘early warning systems’ for skin cancer are poorly regulated and frequently cannot be relied upon to produce accurate results, according to experts.

Although I was broad minded on the potential benefit of apps for diagnosing skin cancer, I am now worried given the results of our study and the overall poor quality of studies used to test these apps. My advice to anyone worried about a possible skin cancer is 'if in doubt, check it out with your GP.'

Hywel Williams, Professor of Dermatology at the University of Nottingham

Researchers at the University of Birmingham in collaboration with CEBD have analysed a series of studies produced to evaluate the accuracy of six different apps. Their results, published in The BMJ, reveal a mixed picture, with only a small number of studies showing variable and unreliable test accuracy among the apps evaluated.