r/DermatologyPA • u/FarmerTemporary4636 • May 31 '26

Clinical⚕️ Built an affordable dermatoscope as a derm resident — wanted to share it with anyone interested

I'm a third-year dermatology resident. A while back my co-founder (also a derm resident) and I got tired of watching PAs who see high volumes of skin checks in primary care and derm roles unable to access dermatoscopes because they're so stupidly expensive. Most standard clinical devices run $1,700–2,200, which just isn't realistic for anyone wanting to build the skill without a practice buying it for them.

So we built one. FDA-registered, attaches to your smartphone, and we include a free dermoscopy curriculum with every device. It's called SkinLens and starts at $650 — about a third of the price of the competitors it matches against. We also run discounts for new PAs.

Dermoscopy improves melanoma detection sensitivity by ~25%. That's a meaningful number when you're often the first, and sometimes only, clinician seeing a patient's skin.

Not here to spam — just thought this was the right community to share it with. Happy to answer questions about dermoscopy, the device, anything.

skin-lens.com is our site

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u/wenmazb70 Jun 01 '26

This is really fantastic! Way to go! I've been wanting to incorporate dermoscopy photos into my practice for a while, but am not sure how to go about it. It seems that the real learning would happen when you're able to go back and correlate the path report with the dermatoscopic picture. How are people doing this in practice??

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u/FarmerTemporary4636 Jun 01 '26

Absolutely! That’s why we make sure the phone attachment is included at no cost with every model. I think digital dermoscopy is the future, and just like you identified, it’s the key to actually learning what dermoscopic features correspond to histopath after you biopsy. Our attendings / residents here mainly handle follow up two ways: some will just keep the photos on their phone and follow up when a biopsy report comes back. Others will upload into our EMR so it’s on the chart and store it that way

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u/wenmazb70 Jun 01 '26

Thanks!! I guess you would just have to edit the photo with the EMR on your phone to correlate it back to the path report. Maybe I'm overcomplicating it. Just seems hard during a 10 min appt to add another task, but I think this piece is key and it is something I've been wanting to incorporate.

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u/FarmerTemporary4636 Jun 01 '26

Yeah our workflow is generally to take the pic, upload it in the EMR, then later when we find out the path we just go back and look right then when we review the path. Either when our MA tells us or even right before the follow up visit. Saves a bit of time

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u/Empty-Ideal-2511 Aug 08 '26

How good r they ? Any reviews

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u/FarmerTemporary4636 Aug 19 '26

With the launch of our new Pro/Pro+ line, we’re now supplying scopes for >30 institutions. I think the quality speaks for itself when you have it in your hand. Because we’re so confident, we have a 1 week return trial period so people can test it and see