Australia: The leading edge of the global fight against melanoma
The numbers behind Australia’s battle with melanoma and skin cancer paint a startling picture. In Australia, skin cancer accounts for around 80 percent of all newly diagnosed cancers, with GPs undertaking over a million patient consultations per year. Two out of three Australians will be diagnosed with some form of skin cancer by the time they are 70.
Recognized as a growing concern in not only Australia, but around the world, MetaOptima strives to equip all medical professionals with the tools they need to provide optimized care in the fight against skin cancer. For example, over five million new cases are diagnosed in the US with an additional 80,000 in Canada each year. The sooner a skin cancer is identified and treated, the better a patient’s chance of avoiding surgery or, in the case of a serious melanoma or other skin cancer, potential disfigurement or even death.
“The statistics for skin cancer in Australia make for grim reading, which led to our initial interest to search for a suitable company to invest in,” says Scott Farquhar, co-founder of Skip Capital and software company Atlassian. “We immediately recognized the potential the DermEngine platform has to radically modernize the dermatology field in Australia. Its ability to provide cutting-edge technology to manage, track and diagnose skin spots will improve early detection rates, which is crucial in melanoma treatment and survival rates.”
“Scott and I undertook a rigorous global search looking for the leading company that is using AI/artificial intelligence and image recognition to improve the false positive and false negative rates for melanoma diagnosis,” said Daniel Petre, co-founder of AirTree Ventures. “MetaOptima, with their DermEngine platform, are far and away the leaders in this space, and we were very pleased to be able to back co-founders Maryam and Majid.”
About DermEngine™ and MoleScope™
DermEngine by MetaOptima: DermEngine is an intelligent dermatology platform for imaging, documenting, communicating and diagnosing skin conditions which is designed to work seamlessly with MoleScope and other dermatoscopes in the market. DermEngine provides quick and efficient mobile, tablet and web access to images, clinical notes and pathology reports to doctors and patients.
MoleScope by MetaOptima: The MoleScope device is a smartphone-attachable dermoscope used to capture high-quality images of moles and track changes over time. The device is capable of producing medical- grade quality pictures — the new standard of care in skin cancer diagnosis and management.
Key Features of DermEngine:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) supports doctor decision-making: DermEngine’s AI image retrieval system finds and displays similar images from a database containing thousands of previously validated pathology-labelled images.
- Instant patient referrals: Healthcare professionals have access to other physicians within the network along with the ability to refer a case, whether to another GP, dermatologist or pathology lab. This provides GPs with a fast and accurate second opinion.
- Free patient portal: Doctors can invite patients to remain connected through the free MoleScope app where users can manage and track their moles while remaining engaged in their care plan.
- Robust data safety profile: DermEngine uses a secure, encrypted platform that is compliant with HIPAA, GDPR and the Australian Privacy Act. Patient information, images and diagnoses are accessible only to patients and their healthcare professionals.
- Available anytime, anywhere: Gone are the days of paper-based systems. Secure, cross-platform access allows healthcare professionals to access the software from their desktop, smartphone, tablet, TV or laptop to access data in a convenient, centralized location.
- Large and growing library of skin lesion images: MetaOptima boasts the largest library of annotated images of skin lesions in the world. This major database has been used to train the company’s successful AI and machine-learning algorithms to become a global leader.
- Gaining recognition as the industry’s gold standard: MetaOptima has already garnered significant traction in the industry-leading market of Australia. This is important because skin cancers in that country account for around 80% of all newly diagnosed cancers, with GPs undertaking over a million patient consultations per year.