Most of us find ourselves turning to Google to find out what our symptoms mean, even if it just a headache, only to be greeted with the list of worst possible diseases with the worst possible outcomes.
You aren’t the only one, each year Google sees almost 10 billion searches related to skin, nail and hair issues. About 2 Billion people worldwide suffer from dermatologic issues, but there’s a global shortage of specialists. Google isn’t a doctor but it is planning to use its AI to become better at helping us.
While many people’s first step involves going to a Google search bar, it can be difficult to describe that what you’re seeing on your skin through words alone. This is where AI would step in. Google unveiled a trial “dermatology assist tool”, at its annual developer conference, Google IO.
Users will be able to self-diagnose issues ranging from acne to melanoma by uploading images of their medical condition via the Derm Assist website and answer questions about their symptoms.
An AI model will analyse the information and give a list of possible conditions. The AI has been fed with millions of images of skin problems, thousands of images of healthy skin, and 65,000 images from clinical settings. It takes factors like age, skin type, sex, and race into account when suggesting possible conditions.
To determine the effectiveness, it was tested on around 1,000 images ok skin problems uploaded by patients and Google claims it identified the correct condition in the top three suggestions 84% of the time. It included the correct condition as one of the possible issues 97% of the time.
Google hopes this tool can help get people accurate information about potential conditions, quickly, without having to spend hours doing their own online research. The web tool is slated to launch later this year.
Prophetpedia 