Introduction
Dermatology is a visually driven medical specialty, making it well-suited for AI-powered use cases1. By analysing images and recognising complex patterns, AI can enhance dermatologic care, from early disease detection to personalised treatment recommendations.
Demand for dermatologic care is expected to rise in the coming years, outpacing the availability of specialists2. Advancing dermatology with AI can improve access to care, enhance diagnostic accuracy, support non-specialists, and improve efficiency—offering faster and more precise evaluations, enabling earlier interventions, and streamlining triage.
To maximise the potential of these advancements, AI algorithms must be trained on large, diverse, high-quality datasets to ensure reliability and fairness across different populations.
Current use cases and innovations
A number of AI solutions have emerged in recent years in dermatology since the landmark publication of Esteva et al., which demonstrated the potential of deep learning for skin cancer classification3. Various players are driving innovation in this field, developing applications that serve different stakeholders, including clinicians and patients, typically falling into one of three categories:
- AI-powered clinical decision support systems (CDSS) help triage cases and provide diagnostic insights, assisting healthcare professionals in making data-driven, informed decisions. Examples of companies in this space include AI Medical Technology, FotoFinder Systems GmbH, Legit.Health, Magnosco GmbH, Skin Analytics and VisualDx.
- AI-based patient decision support systems (PDSS) are designed for patients, often in the form of mobile applications, enabling early skin condition assessments and risk evaluations before seeking further medical consultation. SkinVision is an example of a company in this segment, providing an AI-based smartphone app that helps individuals self-examine their skin.
- Hybrid systems serve both patients and clinicians, combining clinical decision support with patient-facing tools to create an integrated approach to dermatologic care. MetaOptima Technology Inc. and SkinIO are examples of companies bridging the gap between self-assessments and professional diagnostics.
In addition to these targeted use cases, there are ongoing efforts to develop foundation AI models for dermatology. Models like Google’s Derm Foundation, trained on large dermatology-specific datasets, provide a broad, adaptable framework that can be fine-tuned for various tasks, even with smaller datasets4.
How does Aigora enable AI solutions for dermatology?
A crucial factor in developing AI models for dermatology is training them on large, diverse, high-quality datasets to ensure diagnostic accuracy and generalisability across skin conditions and populations.
Aigora (formerly DermaScreen) began as a developer of AI solutions for dermatology, leveraging a large image dataset that it has accumulated from multiple institutions. Over time, we evolved into a leading provider of multimodal real-world data, offering both retrospectively and prospectively collected high-quality datasets for the development of AI models.
Today, we offer access to one of the largest and highest-quality, multimodal, and expert-curated dermatologic image datasets, meeting both research and regulatory-grade standards. The proprietary dataset includes tens of thousands of smartphone and dermoscopic images of various skin conditions, including but not limited to histopathologically confirmed skin cancers such as melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma. With this dataset, Aigora supports the development of AI-based decision support systems, foundation models, and other dermatology-focused applications, benefiting both healthcare professionals and patients.
The research-proven quality of Aigora's data has been demonstrated in peer-reviewed publications in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology and the British Journal of Dermatology, where subsets have been used for AI algorithm training in melanoma diagnosis5,6. Its proven quality also extends to commercial applications, with customers praising the data for its contribution to the accuracy of real-world solutions.
"Aigora is playing a vital role by providing tailored medical data to enhance the quality of our AI-aided system for skin cancer management."—Lukasz Szyc, Director Medical Development, Magnosco
Final word
With proven expertise and a global partner network of healthcare institutions, we enable access to high-quality, geographically diverse multimodal data for AI-based innovations in dermatology and other medical fields.
Reach out to find out how we can support your initiatives with expert-curated datasets.