JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Between the sand and the sun, skin problems can develop fast, especially in the Florida elements.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo I have a rash on my neck because I\u2019ve been wearing a nickel necklace? Or am I allergic to a cosmetic?\u201d Dr. Alison Bruce, a dermatologist and department chair with Mayo Clinic Florida, said.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Those are questions that Bruce said she commonly hears from her patients.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout one in five people may suffer from allergic contact dermatitis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Traditional patch testing helps pinpoint what\u2019s triggering those reactions — a red, itchy, eczema-like rash.<\/p>\n But that kind of testing can be time-consuming for both patients and providers, and could lead to multiple, sometimes pricey, visits to the doctor.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s also sometimes very hard for patients to get access to a dermatologist,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n Bruce and her team explored options, asking \u201cCould artificial intelligence help do what doctors normally do in person?\u201d by reading photos of skin reactions.<\/p>\n \u201cCan we take photographs \u2026 and then can AI interpret those photographs \u2026 determining is it a reaction, yes or no \u2026 and \u2026 is there a way to do this remotely through photographs?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n To teach AI what a reaction looks like, Mayo researchers fed it data — a lot of data.<\/p>\n About 28,000 patch test images collected over the last decade through their system, then compared the AI\u2019s readings to dermatologists.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that the AI was pretty much as good as the dermatologist in interpreting the photographic images,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n But building trustworthy AI in medicine means making sure it works for everyone.<\/p>\n That includes training the system to recognize reactions across all skin tones.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re gonna train AI accurately, you have to have good representation of all skin types. Because you have bear in mind a red rash on a dark black skin is gonna look very different than on a very pale white skin,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Action News Jax\u2019s Chandler Morgan sat down with some of the trial participants.<\/p>\n They said it was the appeal of the AI technology itself that drew them in.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving AI as a potential to read these results \u2026 I think that\u2019s really cool and innovative,\u201d Natalie Thackerdin, a pharmacist and trial participant, said.<\/p>\n During their testing phase, patients still came into the clinic, but the goal is to eventually let people do much of this from home, taking photos with their phones for the AI to help interpret.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cSo it was pretty convenient, pretty straightforward. It didn\u2019t take more than a few minutes for him to basically read it using the AI algorithm,\u201d Guillermo Pradieu, GI Researcher & Trial Participant, said.<\/p>\n Researchers are now training the AI to handle real-world challenges — different phones, lighting, angles.<\/p>\n Long-term they want to develop a patient-friendly patch kit, a secure cloud system, and eventually FDA clearance.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Both the trial participants and Bruce agree that this kind of AI could help unlock easier access to healthcare.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if we frame AI as something that can be used as a supplementary to aid the tools that we already have, it\u2019ll make it a lot easier for patients to accept and be willing to use it. Because it\u2019ll be on their phone, and that AI will be the connection between the provider and the patient,\u201d Pradieu said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope to reduce the burden on patients so that they don\u2019t have to come in but instead be able to potentially do that remotely through photography and AI helping to interpret,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Between the sand and the sun, skin problems can develop fast, especially in the Florida…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[139793,139794,5672,18687,4475,28,116,118,117,634,23545,32231,12839],"class_list":["post-340154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-alison_bruce","tag-bruce","tag-chandler","tag-dr","tag-fda","tag-florida","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-local","tag-mayo","tag-mayo_clinic","tag-morgan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}