Project description
Artificial intelligence to assist in skin cancer screening
Malignant melanoma originates in the skin's melanocytes and is responsible for most deaths caused by skin cancer, due to the high risk of metastases. Early detection of melanoma has a 98 % survival rate, but late detection results only in a 10-25 % survival rate. People at high risk of developing skin cancer have to regularly monitor their skin and moles for changes as early detection is so critical for successful treatment. The EU has provided funding to Miiskin Aps for the development of a supporting tool to assist in the screening and monitoring of skin changes over time with an innovative AI-based application. The novel application will make the monitoring process more efficient and reliable, improving screening of mole changes through automatic photo comparison and unlocking possibilities for teledermatology.
Objective
Malignant Melanoma (MM) is a tumour which originates mostly in the skin melanocytes and is responsible for most deaths caused by skin cancer, due to the high risk of lymphatic metastases and expansion to other areas of the body. Globally, 232,000 people are diagnosed with MM every year, 90,000 of those concentrated in Europe. While early detection of melanoma has a 98% survival rate, late detection has only a 10-25% survival rate, with a mortality rate going from 3% in countries like Norway or Denmark to 6-7% in other areas close to the poles like South Africa or Australia. Treating MM cost to the healthcare system a minimum of €10,000 to €250,000€ per patient.
People at high risk of developing MM or healthy people who has previously been diagnose with MM skin cancer have to regularly monitor their skin and moles for changes. Any skin/mole change can be an early sign of skin cancer and early detection of melanoma is crucial for successful treatment. Nevertheless, the process of spotting manually new changes in the skin can be highly time consuming and unprecise, as it is done manually or using commercial apps (MelApp, SkinVision) lacking clinical certification. We have created, Miiskin app as a supporting tool to help users to monitor skin changes over time with an innovative technology application based in artificial intelligence. Thanks to our innovation, we made the monitoring process more efficient and reliable, helping in the identification of new moles through automatic photo comparison. Moreover, Miiskin will be used as patient-doctor node fully unlocking the potential of teledermatology. Thanks to that we are the unique app worldwide bearing the dermatologically endorsement quality seal. We have already acquired a strong and highly competitive market position as well as the highest rate among Skin Cancer apps, involving more than 400,000 users worldwide. With this ambition we aim to reduce skin cancer mortality to 1% by 2030.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
2100 København O
Denmark
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.