Phone apps ‘miss cancers’

SMARTPHONE apps that test for skin cancer are inaccurate and could lead to avoidable deaths, according to scientists from

Queen Mary University of London.

Researchers found that two apps to detect skin cancers – not named for legal reasons – identified rare and aggressive cancers as low-risk.

Working from users’ photographs, the apps issue an alert if they identify a possible sign of skin cancer, such as unusual moles or discoloured patches.

Research showed the apps, which claim a 95 per cent detection rate, classified as many as one fifth of some cancers as benign, rather than malignant, such as amelanotic melanoma and merkel cell carcinoma.