I try not to stand naked in front of strangers. Actually, I try and avoid doing it in front of friends as well! The problem is, that fear of being seen in the nude is impacting our health – particularly with men. Only 40 per cent of men over the age of 35 visit a doctor regularly and one of the primary reasons they state for not visiting a medical professional is embarrassment. Embarrassment about their body, about the state of their health and about the shape and size of various bits and pieces.

In Australia that can create even more of an issue. Over 67 per cent of Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70. We officially have the highest rate of melanomas in the world with New Zealand coming in second (at least we can beat New Zealand at something) and men have a higher rate than women.

The good news with skin cancer is that we have methods of detection and we have methods of treatment when detected early – but it involves being naked in front of a doctor. Or does it?

Two crucial statistics helped form an idea for developers to create a new app. COVID-19 has resulted in a 94 per cent drop in medical visitation for general check-ups. Males were reluctant to visit a doctor before coronavirus but now they had a somewhat legitimate excuse. Social distancing. The second statistic is that 32 per cent of men over the age of 35 are quite happy taking a photo of parts of their naked body and sending it to another person.

The obvious solution is to develop an app that will allow a user to take a naked photo and let the power of AI use body skin mapping and augmented reality to digitally track freckles, moles and skin changes over time. Users take full body photos in addition to close-up photos of specific areas of concern on their body. If you aren’t sure whether a blemish has been changing, let the app track changes for you. When you consider that 80 per cent of melanomas appear as new moles or marks and only 20 per cent come from existing moles, recognising changes in your body can be crucial to catching a melanoma early.

Of course your phone can’t resolve an issue once detected. The medical profession is still needed but research shows that even men will visit a doctor once they confirm there is an issue to be dealt with.

But this is only the start. There is a new mobile health category that is growing at 40 per cent each year and it will be worth US$22 billion by 2022. Although the trend was already happening, there is nothing like a pandemic to accelerate the progression of this market.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an algorithm that will correctly identify a person infected with COVID-19 just by the sound of their cough. What is even more remarkable is that it will pick up the difference even in people who are asymptomatic. Although this hasn’t been turned in to an app…yet…imagine the practical examples of using such an app for daily screening of employees or students. Gaining entry in to an event just by performing a cough test. After collecting 70,000 audio samples the researchers have refined the accuracy to a level of 98.5 percent. Not bad considering that saliva tests are only rated at about 70 per cent.

Tell me if you are comfortable with AI powering some of your health checks at ask@techtalk.digital.

Mathew Dickerson

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