How Apps like "Miiskin" are Becoming the Future of Patient Care

Margareth Pierre-Louis, MD, a dermatologist at Twin Cities Dermatology in Minneapolis, has made it her mission to provide skin care for patients, regardless of their race, skin tone, and background. Oftentimes, the ability for patients to use digital tools can be frustrating to providers - as it can lead to self-diagnosis and unnecessary fear (think WebMD). However, Dr. Pierre-Louis is embracing the shift to digital tools, using skin tracking apps and secure platforms, such as MiiSkin, to communicate and monitor patients’ skin lesions remotely. 

In this video, Dr Margareth Pierre-Louis discusses how apps like "Miiskin" are becoming the future of health care and should be utilized by dermatologists to help virtually triage patients.

TRANSCRIPT-

Dr. Margareth Pierre-Louis:  Miiskin is an app that was started five years ago by Jon Friis out of Denmark. I chose them to work with because they address those three points I made about, one, they give me a way to triage patients. Two, they give me a way to then determine how to turn that into a virtual visit through successful triage.

Three, they allow me to engage the patient. The patient's connected to me. They're the ones finding me and saying, "I want you to be my dermatologist," so I'm engaging them.

This app gives them a way to monitor themselves because they can use the self-tracking tool to monitor themselves.

If anyone has seen the AAD cards that we give out when we do skin checks, right on the back of that card, after you go through the ABCDEs of melanoma, are instructions for how to make sure you do a successful body screen.

Well, it's the world of the smartphone. Why not use your phone to capture those images and track them? That's going to be better for the patient. Why not offer them the best technology out there that's AI-powered to make sure they can do the best self-tracking and self-monitoring of their skin lesions as possible?

Miiskin, to me, is the only platform that allows me to do all those three things. Again, it is not a virtual visit platform. I believe you cannot have a successful virtual visit platform in-house unless, again, you go to a third party to get it. I don't believe you can have one in-house if you cannot first successfully triage the patients.

What you don't want to do, you don't want to triage your patients through email. You don't want to do it through unsecured platforms that could lead you down the path of liability and other issues, say that email gets lost. Then, of course, email is not HIPAA compliant.

What makes Miiskin so great? It is a HIPAA-compliant platform. It is totally initiated by the patient. All the security and privacy practices are in place to protect that person and their health information. They, again, reach out to you. It is a subscription that the dermatologist makes.

It's a gift you're giving to the digital patient and we have stats for you. We've had a dramatic number of new patients come in through finding us online, learning about Miiskin, downloading the app, using our code, and then they become a patient.

We would have not been able to capture that digital patient if we didn't have that presence out there on a digital health platform. We use Miiskin to triage. We use it as a way to engage the patient. We offer them the gift of self-monitoring because they can use it to track their moles.

If there's something of concern, guess what? That digital consumer turns into a digital patient, because they can easily connect, give us access to that image, and then we can then intervene and say, "Hey, get in here right away," or we can say, "This is reassuring," or if it's a new patient, say, "Hey, we think we could help you with this. Why don't you submit a virtual visit on our platform?"

That's what we do with Miiskin. I've seen our clinical grow leaps and bounds by using this platform.