Piction Health and the treatment of skin diseases using machine learning

Piction Health began as a mobile app that used artificial intelligence to recognize melanoma from images. Today, however, the founders are focused on helping doctors identify and treat the most popular skin diseases - among them both common rashes and acne, as well as shingles.

"All of these diseases are ones that dermatologists often go to dermatology with, and dermatologists get frustrated because they'd rather spend time treating skin cancer or other conditions that need their help," says the founder of the company. As such, in the future, Piction Health will add the ability to assess wounds and complex infectious diseases such as leprosy, as well as detect skin cancer, to its capabilities.

Training a machine-learning model to recognize a huge variety of diseases will be much more difficult than training it to recognize melanoma. However, Piction's founding team is ready for it, because they believe it is the best way forward.