First Derm, a teledermatology business, is ratcheting up its services with the addition of a dermatoscope. It launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo for what it calls a “smart mole scanner” named HÜD (the Swedish word for skin). The smartphone-mounted dermatascope device scans images of moles and transmit them to a pool of board-certified dermatologists in the U.S. and Europe, who are contracted by First Derm to evaluate and assess them.
The motivation behind the crowdfunding project is not only to sell these devices, but to also gauge which market segment it should direct its attention, according to First Derm founder and CEO Alexander Börve. The dermatascopes, produced by Dermlite, are in production and scheduled to be delivered in January 2016, according to the company’s Indiegogo campaign.
Börve said HÜD is a Class 1 medical device and an FDA-regulated product manufactured by an FDA-regulated company
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To date, the company has received no institutional funding. The bootstrapped business only wants to add investors that can provide value, such as know how and a network, not just money, Börve said.
“We decided to take this route for getting market research on our users, so when we target users online when the scopes are out it will be easier. We hope to sell the scopes in pharmacies and direct to medical professionals too: nurses, PA, family doctors, medical students, etc. Usually a dermatascope costs between $500 and $1000 to a dermatologist. This is a cheaper version, but does the same job,” Börve said. It charges $80 for ones priced on its website
Part of the motivation for adding the device for its users was that about 25 percent of its customer base use its app because they are concerned about skin cancer. Börve explained that dermatologists wanted high grade images of moles, that went beyond what smartphone cameras can produce. It also provides a service to get rashes reviewed — based on images sent from users cameraphones and evaluated by its dermatologists.
Börve claims the company’s app has more than 120,000 downloads from 160 countries, with 5,000 cases coming in each month, and more than 500 possible dangerous lesions discovered. Eighty percent of its customer base is in the US, he said.
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Prices for the assessment vary, depending how fast users want their case reviewed. A 48-hour turn-around time is priced at $25. A result in 24 hours costs $40, and an assessment in four hours costs $100. The company is also looking at rolling out a monthly subscription model for mole reviews.
Digital health companies with apps claiming to help people identify potentially cancerous moles earlier have come under scrutiny from regulators because they are frequently not clinically validated. The concern is that users will rely to much on the assessment of an app rather than checking it out with a physician. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Mole Detective and MelApp over marketing claims that the apps could detect melanoma symptoms, even in early stages.
Whether bringing a device associated with dermatologists into consumers homes will add more authority to First Derm’s approach remains to be seen.