Startup story #12 - Skinmind

Every year, millions of people around the world are diagnosed with skin cancer. Despite being a potentially curable disease, skin cancer is still associated with a high number of deaths and costs of treatment. Late detection remains an important challenge due to limited access to dermatologists, especially in some countries where people have low awareness regarding skin cancer-connected issues. Skinmind aims to address these issues by developing an innovative AI-powered system for self-diagnosis of skin lesions, designed to support both patients and doctors in detecting and monitoring skin moles. In this brief interview, Sepehr Beheshti, founder, CEO and USI alumnus shares insights about his entrepreneurial journey.

How did the story of Skinmind begin?
I have always aspired to start my own activity and become an impactful entrepreneur. With this goal in mind, I started my master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence at USI. During my studies, I took a course in which we were required to select a real-world problem and develop an algorithmic solution. While exploring potential applications of AI in skin lesion detection and classification, I shared my project and results with several dermatologists in Switzerland to get their feedback and better understand the current situation and challenges they are facing. At that time, I realised that dermatology was a prime area for AI to drive meaningful advancements.

How does Skinmind work?
Skinmind addresses the critical problem of late detection of skin cancer. Currently, 60% of melanomas are self-detected by patients, but often at advanced stages. With the Skinmind app, patients can simply take a photo of their skin spot and get instant feedback. In a few seconds, they can get a preliminary assessment and risk indication regarding their skin lesions. By integrating our solution into the current medical practice, we want to support and improve the diagnostic capacity of skin lesions and skin cancers, but our solution is not designed to replace dermatologists or specialists. We know the limitations and challenges that dermatologists faces every day and we want to support them to enhance the quality and efficiency of the entire clinical process.

What have you achieved so far and what are your next goals?
We have developed our first prototype by involving also my university thesis in this project. My master's thesis was focused on better understanding the limitations and capacities of AI in dermatology, with a special focus on implementing various state-of-the-art algorithms and image-processing techniques to improve our AI system. We are now aware of the main limitations of the product which we have to overcome to reach the desired level of reliability. In the future, our effort will focus on obtaining more data and, hopefully, creating meaningful collaboration with hospitals and research centres.

From your experience so far, what advice would you give to students interested in entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship is all about balancing risks and opportunities which is the same perspective that almost all investors use to evaluate startup projects. If you are considering being an entrepreneur, it’s great, and my suggestion is to be sufficiently aware of risk-opportunity, improving your risk tolerance and risk management capacities. On top of that, success requires other elements like technical expertise, financial support, product-market fit, legal compliance, and many other factors. To be a successful start-upper you need to have a plan and road map for all of them.

3 Quick Questions to Wrap it Up:

• What is the most important lesson you’ve learned? “Be always in a learning mood and take away something from everyone you meet, especially experienced and skilled people”.
• What is one thing you didn’t expect in your entrepreneurial journey? Without a doubt, the crucial role that regulations and clinical studies play in this field. They require careful attention from the beginning.
• What is your definition of success? Creating value that can be recognized by your own and the world outside, impacting positively both society and individuals.