Digital Skin Care: Top 8 Dermatology Apps via The Medical Futurist

Each year 2-3 million non-melanoma and 132,000 melanoma skin cancers occur globally according to statistics from the WHO. Thus, every tool has to be deployed for early detection and intervention. As smartphone penetration already reached the quarter of the Earth’s population, smartphone apps seem to be a viable way to go against skin conditions. Here, we collected the top dermatology apps to aid your digital skin care.

As smartphones take over the world, dermatology apps multiply

As technology continues to advance, so does its accessibility to the general population. In 2013, only 56 percent of Americans owned a smartphone, which climbed to 77 percent in 2017. Next year, there were around 1.56 billion smartphones sales worldwide, and the user number reached more than 2.71 billion by now. With planet Earth’s population over 7.6 billion, these numbers show that approximately 20 percent of all people got a new smartphone last year.

As a consequence, smartphone apps of all categories multiplied exponentially. No matter whether you want to add more cats to your life through Cat Paint or want to know what ghosts are talking about around you, the right app is just a tap away. In dermatology, a study published in 2017 found 526 apps corresponding to an 80.8 percent growth in smartphone-based platforms since 2014. The boom is understandable: as you can easily detect if you have a skin problem, and smartphones coupled with super-fast internet connection make it easy to check images against databases, send pictures or footage anywhere, self-surveillance solutions, disease guides, educational apps as well as telehealth platforms appeared naturally in dermatology. Here’s our take on the most useful and efficient digital solutions for the health of your skin.