Review on AI-enabled iOS Mobile Apps for Skin Disease Management

The global burden of dermatological conditions and the increased reliance on mobile health technologies go hand in hand. The emergence of AI-powered dermatology applications on the mHealth platform has revolutionized skin health management. This review evaluates systematically selected 20 iOS dermatology applications’ functionalities, validation, and effectiveness. Key features assessed include the underlying AI models (if mentioned), the scope of different diseases covered, user experience, patient education, and privacy measures. Despite all the improvements in diagnostic efficiency for skin diseases brought by AI, only half of the apps had clinical validation, and just 30% had model validation on all skin types. This must be considered in relation to their applicability in diverse populations. Furthermore, 55% of the apps did not specify their data sources, and 45% did not specify the AI models used, which showed a lack of transparency on data usage. We observed privacy concerns of the apps as 10% of the studied apps use user financial information, 30% apps use usage data without linking to users. Overall, we believe this review emphasizes the urgent need for improved validation, transparency measures and robust regulatory frameworks to use AI-based mHealth dermatology tools safely. Our results offer valuable insights to developers, researchers, and policymakers regarding the reliability and inclusivity of AI-powered dermatology applications for skin health management. The complete data extraction table can be found in https://github.com/tanviralambd/SkinDiseaseIOS.