Wow, what a difference a year makes. For Liz Asai and her startup 3Derm, the last twelve months welcomed a bigger team, bigger markets, and more strategic partners. Artificial intelligence, just a gleam in their eye back then, has now come to the forefront.

A few important AI papers came out since my last conversation with Liz showing how a few researchers using open source neural nets trained on skin photos from the internet were more accurate diagnosing skin cancer than board certified dermatologists. The main limitation is you need to take super high quality images and match them with a strong model. 3Derm is in a unique place to take advantage of these constraints.

People used to be uncomfortable with the thought of a "robot" interfering with the physician-patient relationship, but today's patients want an algorithm to provide a second opinion affirming their physician's assessment.

Liz envisions a day when visitors to CVS Health walk into the MinuteClinic for a quick mole check with instantaneous feedback to calm the nerves and make the right recommendation to a dermotologist at the right time. The future is bright for 3Derm. Listen on to find out why.

If you're interested in the full backstory, make sure to check out Episode 10 as well.