Comprehensive Summary
Chaparro et al examine the use and benefits of AI in the classification, diagnosis, and monitoring of skin lesions. To do this, the authors review articles published in PubMed, Lilacs, and Scopus from 2008 to 2024. In the end, forty-four articles were selected to be used in this study. The findings strongly support the effectiveness of AI, demonstrating that diagnostic precision was comparable to, and in some cases, better than that of dermatologists. For example, one study showed that a convolution neural network (CNN) achieved 97.1% sensitivity and 78.8% specificity when differentiating combined naevi from melanomas, compared to dermatologists who achieved a 90.6% sensitivity and 71.0% specificity. AI assistance also improved agreement with reference diagnoses among primary care physicians by 10% and nurse practitioners by 12%. The authors emphasize that AI is a crucial complementary tool to enhance, not replace, the expertise and clinical judgement of dermatologists.
Outcomes and Implications
AI can help enhance diagnostic capabilities across many dermatological conditions and significantly improve the performance of primary care providers by helping them make faster and more reliable decisions. However, the authors note that there is still a big gap in actually validating AI in real clinical settings, and it’s important to be careful about the ethical concerns that come with automated decision-making in healthcare.