In her interview segment with Orit Markowitz, MD, she outlined areas that need further exploration in the skin health space related to her presentation at the SDPA’s 20th Annual Fall Dermatology Conference and innovations she hopes to see in the future.
Markowitz works as a dermatologist and skin cancer specialist. She is also CEO and Founder of Markowitz Medical and is known for her work in developing minimally invasive skin cancer diagnosis and treatment protocols.
The presentation, at which Markowitz was interviewed, explored some of the ways dermatologists and fellow physicians can distinguish pigmented squamous cell and pigmented basal cell skin cancers and melanoma from less dangerous skin conditions.
In this segment of the interview, she first highlighted some research gaps that she hoped would be expanded, such as the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which she says is helpful for efficiency in the medical field.
“How can we make it better?” Markowitz asked about artificial intelligence. “How can we evolve? How can we make people more efficient? And definitely not “how can we replace” because AI hasn’t really done that in pretty much any field, let alone medicine. Rather, it’s about making us better at what we do and also making ourselves more efficient. So this is certainly an interesting area of research.”
Markowitz also described some of the research she is involved in, such as how different types of medical technology can be used in other spaces.
“But a lot of the research I’m doing now is we’re taking the modalities that we use to diagnose skin cancer, non-invasive imaging, various other technologies, and applying them to other aspects of skin and dermatology,” she says explained. “Maybe there are things we can learn in the cosmetic field, maybe there are ways to diagnose or even treat other skin conditions. And so a lot of the research I do now also happens in those areas.”
Markowitz concluded by describing the future of patient knowledge about skin health and skin cancer.
“We have more cases of skin cancer each year than breast, colon, lung and prostate cancer combined,” she said. “So patients are more aware of that now, because they’re just more, there’s just so much more education for patients.”
Watch Markowitz’s full SDPA 2022 presentation interview above.
