ROCHESTER, NY (April 24, 2019)

In a survey of more than 1,500 U.S. millennials, 7 in 10 say skin damage is a significant concern for them. Yet when it comes to skin care and sun precautions, their everyday practices suggest a different attitude. A new poll sponsored by the developers of Aysa, an artificial intelligence-driven symptom checker app, aimed to uncover millennial attitudes and habits when it comes to protecting their skin – and here’s what it found.

Although 70% of millennials surveyed say they are concerned about skin damage from the sun, only 14% use sunscreen every day – despite the fact that sunscreen is widely known to be the best protector against the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. According to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), sunscreen should be used every day, even if it is cloudy, as 80 percent of the sun’s rays can penetrate skin on those days. Nevertheless, 4 in 10 millennials surveyed only used sunscreen when they expected to be spending time in the sun. Fortunately, when millennials do use sunscreen, 78% use sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 30 or higher (as recommended by the AAD).

“Dermatologists are seeing a concerning rise in skin cancer among young people and continued lack of precaution,” says Dr. Art Papier, dermatologist and CEO of Aysa’s parent company, VisualDx. “Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, and melanoma rates continue to increase rapidly.” In fact, 1 in 5 Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer in their lifetime, and men and women with a history of nonmelanoma skin cancer are at a higher risk of developing melanoma.

While 25% of millennials surveyed acknowledged a family history of skin cancer, of this group, 43% have never seen a dermatologist for a routine checkup. This is concerning because, as Dr. Papier notes, “Individuals, regardless of age, with a family history of skin cancer should be evaluated by a dermatologist and then see a dermatologist yearly for a full body scan if their risk profile is high.”

In 2017, the average wait time in metro areas to see a dermatologist for a routine skin exam was 32 days, which could explain why millennials – even those with a family history of skin cancer – are not making appointments with dermatologists. “Access is a concern in the field of dermatology,” Papier adds.

Of the millennials surveyed, 45% noted that they are prone to develop freckles and moles from sun exposure. This is a risk factor for skin cancer, and yet nearly 20% of these respondents said they do not know what an abnormal freckle or mole looks like. “Part of the reason for developing Aysa was to give individuals tools for understanding their skin issues at home,” explains Dr. Papier.

Users of the Aysa app can take or select a picture of a rash or skin lesion, and through machine learning and artificial intelligence, Aysa is able to analyze the photo and provide guidance on next steps, whether trying an over-the-counter cream or ointment, making an appointment with a dermatologist, or seeking immediate medical attention from an emergency room. Dr. Papier says, “We want to do a better job of educating people to help them make good health decisions.”

Survey Methodology

The findings are based on a Pollfish survey of more than 1,500 millennials in the United States.

The US Food and Drug Administration wants to test your sunscreen; should you be concerned?

Whether you slather on lotion or mist yourself with sprays, sunscreen is an important tool to protect your skin from the sun. This tool is actually an over-the-counter drug that the FDA regulates, and it does contain chemicals. Now, the agency wants more testing and data on what goes into your sunscreen.

What is considered safe? Should I check my label?

There are 16 active ingredients in sunscreen that the FDA can classify.¹ Two ingredients (titanium dioxide and zinc oxide) are considered safe and effective. Two others (PABA and tolamine salicylate) are not safe and effective. Don’t worry, though – you don’t have to check your sunscreen label for PABA and tolamine salicylate, because they are banned already from sunscreens sold in the United States.²

As for the other 12 ingredients, the FDA wants more information before coming to a definite conclusion, which is why they’ve proposed more testing.

If my sunscreen has any of the 12 ingredients, should I throw it out?

Absolutely not. These ingredients have been in sunscreen for years. The FDA isn’t saying those ingredients aren’t safe; the agency just wants to be thorough. In fact, in the recent proposal, the FDA recommends continuing to use the sunscreen you have.

When will this testing take place?

This is still a proposal. The FDA guidelines are open for comment until the end of May. Then, the agency has until the end of November to send the proposal to Congress. If approved, testing could take years.

What should I do in the meantime?

Practice good sun protection (American Academy of Dermatology recommendations):

• Seek shade.
• Dress to protect yourself from the sun.
• Apply sunscreen to skin that isn’t covered by clothing with SPF 30 or higher.

The American Academy of Dermatology has a number of resources for you to check out, including How to Select Sunscreen and How to Apply. If you have any other questions or concerns, check with a board-certified dermatologist.

 

¹US Food and Drug Administration. Sunscreen: How to help protect your skin from the sun. https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm239463.htm. Last updated February 21, 2019. Accessed April 26, 2019.

²American Academy of Dermatology. Is sunscreen safe?

https://www.aad.org/public/spot-skin-cancer/learn-about-skin-cancer/prevent/is-sunsceen-safe. Accessed April 26, 2019.

(JANUARY 3, 2019) by Steve Xu, M.D., FAAD

What exactly is digital health? The scope and definition of digital health is broadening and now, it seems, digital health is essentially anything that isn’t a drug or traditional medical device. It encompasses hardware (mobile phones, wearable sensors), software (AI, machine learning, mobile phone apps), and digital communication platforms (telemedicine, text, email) to improve health.

For challenging rashes and inflammatory skin diseases, VisualDx released a consumer app in 2018 called Aysa that uses machine learning to identify inflammatory skin conditions and make preliminary recommendations for self-help and treatment. These innovations represent important examples of how digital health is impacting dermatology.

Read Dr. Xu’s full column on Dermatology Times.

by Nakisha Wynn

How many times have you looked at your kid and noticed a bump, bruise or mysterious rash out of nowhere? It’s happened to me more times that I care to admit, especially with four kids in the house. After seeing it, I usually run to Google and find myself panicking from the results I get. That turns into a wile ride to urgent care just for them to tell me it’s fine. Then there I am again, wishing I hadn’t wasted my time.

Well I won’t be doing that again! Thanks to Aysa.

Everything you need to know about the newest skin rash app: Aysa

The Aysa rash app and symptom checker identifies common skin conditions. Powered by VisualDx, Aysa will analyze your photo and provide immediate answers and guidance.

My oldest son and youngest daughter both suffer from eczema. If I don’t keep a close eye it can turn bad fast! During certain months I really have to stay on top of it. Being outside for little league football and the weather being colder than normal, the winter months usually cause their dry skin to be even drier. I used the Aysa rash app on my daughter to see if a dry patch on her back just needed moisturizer or if it indeed was her eczema flaring up. I was impressed with how easy it was to use.

Here’s how Aysa works:

1. Snap a picture of the affected area on your skin.
2. Answer a few questions about the symptoms.
3. Aysa provides personalized guidance on what to do next.
4. Take action on the reliable results. This can include self care, a call with a medical provider or help locating the closest specialist.

Aysa draws on the experience of 47,000 physicians and nurses and more than 137,000,000 health searches to be your trusted digital skin advisor. You can use it knowing that you are getting accurate information regarding your symptoms and make an educated decision based on that.

Aysa was impressive when I tried it on my teenagers skin too. My son is 14, plays all kinds of sports, and is at the peak age for acne! So I wanted to see what Aysa would say about the tiny bumps on his forehead. Imagine my surprise when it gave me the result of common acne. It said that acne was caused by hormonal changes, overgrowth of normal skin bacteria and the overproduction of natural oils. That was reassuring for my son, because I always joke that it’s from not cleaning his room. I need an app for that!

Oh all the times I couldn’t used this app in my life (insert weary face emoji). But when you know better you do better right?! Now I know the Aysa rash app has got me covered on all my skin concerns.

Aysa is available on iPhone and can be downloaded in the Apple Store.

by Jenny Berk

We love apps. My kids have Twisty Road, Boggle, Helix Jump, and their favorite, 2048.

But they were a bit perplexed when I downloaded an app for them – for all of us, really – about skin care.

Yep, there is an app for all things skin conditions. It’s like a dermatological dream! Except I learned early on that my littles don’t have the same fascination about all things medical, especially gross skin medical stuff, that I do. Don’t get me wrong, they love to tell me about all their various bug bites, blisters, rashes, and random marks, but they just don’t want to see it and talk about it UP CLOSE.

I was excited to try Aysa because it seemed like the perfect little accessory to my daily dose of checking my kiddos’ skin stuff. I finally had an answer to their daily question. “Mommy, what is this red itchy blotch on my wrist?” “Well, honey, let’s take a picture through Aysa and find out!”

First up was my daughter Mira. She has had a few little bumps near her eyes for a while. I’ll save the reader the gory details like the pus on the top of each bump. We can leave that for another day. I knew, from sending her to the MD a while back, that it was molluscum contagiosum but wanted to test out the super skin sleuthing of Aysa.

Sure enough, Aysa got the diagnosis correct!

The cool thing about this app is that you only have to take a picture of the affected area and then you answer a few questions (such as whether it’s itchy, what color it is, and if there is an associated fever or other symptoms). Then the app gets to work through machine learning and its deep knowledge base. When the results come in, the app shows you several options of what it could be, and the user picks which it is closest to based on photos and associated symptoms. You can set up user profiles for each person in your household.

Obviously, one should not use this app to diagnose, and the company is clear about following up with a professional MD to get a proper diagnosis. But it actually helps reduce some anxiety about what it COULD be. As a former WebMD user, I know it’s easy to get frightened by all the would-bes and what-ifs.

All in all, I thought it was a very well designed and user-friendly app with the possibility for daily use, depending on your family’s own level of hypochondriasis. I kid, I kid.

I created “case studies” for all three of my girls, and we had a lot of fun with it. Two of my girls loved researching the myriad skin conditions Aysa provides info about. (My middle daughter, who, much like her father, gets queasy looking at anything medical, looked a little nauseous when prurigo nodularis popped up as the first option. She almost dry heaved upon gazing at photos of congenital melanocytic nevus and actually ran to her room after seeing what lichen simplex chronicus was all about.)

While I recognize my girls probably won’t end up being dermatologists when they grow up, we enjoyed the process and will definitely continue to use the app – for the whole family.

I’ll just refrain from showing them the results.

(The app is currently available for free download at vdxaskaysaprod.wpengine.com or through your app store on your iPhone.)

by Jonah Comstock (NOVEMBER 14, 2018)

Computer vision has great promise for helping to democratize fields like wound care, dermatology and more. However, as companies explore this potential, they’re also discovering a number of challenges to overcome.

Companies like VisualDx, which have a robust dataset from years in the CDS space, have to balance patient privacy consideration. “In our professional tool, when a doctor takes a pictures of a patient the image is analyzed on the phone and the image is dumped,” CEO Art Papier told MobiHealthNews. “So we never see the image because of confidentiality. So I think on the consumer side there’s an opt-in where the user can click a box where they say they’re willing to train data and can create a feedback loop and start training the system. We’ll be getting going with that this year.”

Learn more about the challenges AI face in the healthcare space by reading the full MobiHealthNews article.

by Erin Dietsche, MedCity News (SEPTEMBER 20, 2018)

VisualDx, a Rochester, New York-based company that designed a clinical decision support tool for doctors, has expanded its innovative thinking to the world of consumers.

At the Health 2.0 conference earlier this week, it launched its first app geared aimed at consumers: Aysa, an artificial intelligence-powered tool that lets people learn about their skin conditions.

The app is trained via VisualDx’s platform, which brings together medical expertise and a database of over 120,000.

In a recent phone interview, Rory Burrill, VisualDx’s vice president of business development and general manager of consumer health strategy said his company saw its platform and know-how as a valuable resource that could assist others.

Read the full article here.

by Melissa

There used to be a commercial on TV that I’d see pretty consistently, where women were calling their moms to ask questions about how to make doctors appointments, how long to cook food for, etc. Every time I’d find myself relating deeply with those women because I’ve been there. I’ve called my mom to ask her every question under the sun; questions ranging from medications, dry cleaning, recipes and more. Whenever a question popped us that I didn’t have the answer to or was unsure about, I always thought about my mom because, to me, she knew everything.

There was no doubt in my mind that my mom would always have the answers for me, so, as a parent myself it doesn’t surprise me that my children think along those same lines. Their questions are a little less complex than the ones I’ve asked my own mom but nonetheless I feel like I’m a constant source of knowledge where my kids are concerned. That is, unless it has anything to do with ailments related to the skin. When it comes to anything like rashes, bumps, or even allergic reactions, Google has always been my go-to…that is, until recently when I became a tester for an app called Aysa.

As far as apps go, Aysa is still in its early stages. With the official launch that just happened, I couldn’t be more excited to help promote such an incredibly helpful piece of technology. How is it helpful? Well, allow me to introduce to my readers to the consumer facing symptom checker app that is changing the diagnosis game. What that means is that Aysa is able to help people, who have absolutely no medical background, diagnose common skin problems without having to see a doctor. Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t have to be seen in the future, but it does mean that Aysa can help identify a problem as well as help figure out IF you need to be seen or how to treat it at home if a doctor’s visit isn’t needed.

The app can help with more than 200 different kinds of skin conditions, including those such as psoriasis, poison ivy, hives, and more. It can also give you tips on whether or not an over the counter medicine is going to be of help to you of if you should in fact make a call to your doctor. In recent studies, it has been shown that up to 80% of internet users search for health care topics online, however it has also been proven that up to 50% of symptom checkers that are used consistently turn up as being wrong – and this is where Aysa comes into play.

Thanks to the apps clinical data and image library, Aysa is able to help you identify the problem more readily than ever. While it isn’t considered a tool that is able to actually “diagnose” the issue, the app can help guide users to help them know how to proceed once a more accurate idea of what skin issue has occurred is narrowed down.

Using the app is simple and quick, so you can avoid panic and undue stress while trying to figure out if you’ve come into contact with poison oak/ivy, if you’ve developed hives due to an unknown allergy, etc. All the user has to do is take a picture of the effected area and Aysa will take it from there, using access to knowledge from more than 47,000 nurses & physicians, and 137,000,000 health searches to help you better understand the underlying issue. You can interact with the app, answering questions about the ailment, your age and more, use it to refine your results and then figure out your next step – all without the internet telling you you have an incurable disease and rushing yourself to the nearest emergency department!

For users, especially parents who are prone to think the worst, Aysa is the latest lifesaver in the tech world. It’s fast, easy to use and provides piece of mind in a matter or mere minutes. I highly recommend this app to my readers. After all, who couldn’t use a little more piece of mind, especially when it comes to things like getting answers to questions about your health?

You can download Aysa from the App Store now, and to keep yourself up to date with all of the latest information about Aysa, you can visit them online or become a follower of their social media sites like Facebook & Twitter. You definitely won’t regret giving them a like to see how Aysa can help you & your loved ones!