Monitoring atopic dermatitis using mobile-app based photography and surveys

Remote monitoring of disease activity has the potential to improve research and clinical care in dermatology, but validated tools are lacking. Scientists at BCHSI/Center for Real World Evidence (CRWE) recently partnered with the Department of Dermatology to develop and test a new tool for patient guided capture of eczema disease activity using a new mobile app, ‘Skintracker’. The BCHSI team helped de-identify and annotate images.

BCHSI Data Scientists Gundolf Schenk and Hunter Mills helped with the de-identification of the tabulated patient study data and the body/dermatology photos. Annotator Julie Hillpot from the UCSF Industry Document Library marked and obscured any identifying information on the picturess. De-identifying photos of the skin that were taken by patients using the Skintracker app was a key step to make the data usable for downstream research, which aims to automate the scoring of atopic dermatitis severity. This has the potential to improve clinical trial efficiency (ability to remotely monitor patient outcomes), as well as more precise monitoring in clinical practice. This CRWE project funded by Janssen. Read paper