Comprehensive Summary
The following study performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate how accurately AI models can assess disease severity in inflammatory skin conditions such as psoriasis, acne, and atopic dermatitis. This study systematically searched PubMed, Embase, IEEE Xplore, and Web of Science for publications between 2017 and 2023, identifying 45 studies for qualitative analysis and 19 for quantitative meta-analysis. Using bivariate modeling and meta-regression, the authors found pooled sensitivities of 80.5% and specificities of 96.2% across all AI models. Accuracy varied significantly by disease and scoring system: for example, AI performed best in atopic dermatitis (sensitivity 91.8%), followed by acne (80.7%) and psoriasis (71.1%). Among severity indices, the Eczema Area of Severity Index (EASI) showed superior accuracy (97.3%) compared to the Investigator’s Global Assessment (IGA) (78.9%). Despite strong performance, the review highlighted limitations, including heterogeneity, limited demographic diversity, and insufficient reporting of skin tone metadata across studies.
Outcomes and Implications
This comprehensive analysis demonstrates that AI algorithms have achieved high diagnostic precision in grading the severity of inflammatory skin diseases, marking a significant step forward in dermatologic care beyond lesion detection. The findings suggest that AI can serve as a decision-support tool to standardize severity scoring, reduce inter-clinician variability, and improve treatment planning and monitoring, particularly in chronic diseases like psoriasis and eczema. However, the study emphasizes the urgent need for prospective, diverse, and transparent clinical validation, noting that over 75% of existing studies lacked diversity data and relied on retrospective or private datasets. Incorporating patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and full-body imaging could further enhance AI reliability and real-world applicability. The authors conclude that with improved data quality and diverse representation. AI-assisted severity assessment may soon become an integral component of precision dermatology, enabling equitable, objective, and reproducible care across populations.