About

Introducing the AISC Consortium

AISC is a research consortium with a vision of producing clinically applicable research in the field of skin and mole cancer diagnostics. In a collaboration between private and public, national and international, AISC seeks to develop an evidence-based clinically implementable tool for healthcare professionals that diagnose and treat skin cancer.
A paradigm shift that reinforces the focus of the clinical routine from production to learning.

6 years of education in 2 months

With shared data, expert-reviewed learning materials and an AI augmented digital mentor that optimizes the learning material for each user, the doctor can learn in two months what would have otherwise taken 6 years.

The change

AISC will investigate the effect of the introduction of a smartphone-based educational platform that allows easy follow-up and where the clinical feedback is continues, systematic and timesaving.

Current standard of practice leaves little room for actual learning and very few clinicians have time to follow up on previous patients. This leads to a loss of valuable clinical learning for each doctor. We wish to iterate that fact by fusing work, documentation and clinical feedback.

By far most skin lesions seen in the GP’s office are benign with no need for referral to the dermatologist and no need for surgical intervention. The most important treatment for the patient in most cases is reassurance. With an improved diagnostic accuracy this can be given in more cases initially, instead of the patient having to be seen by any other doctors.

A picture is worth a thousand words

To us, thousands of pictures are worth more than mere words. By letting the clinician systematically photo-document and diagnose his or her patients’ skin lesions and learning from thousands of other cases, we will teach an AI to help accelerate the learning curve for each participating doctor.

Eventually the growing library of annotated pictures of skin lesions will teach an AI to support the clinician in his or her diagnosis, right there with the patient waiting. Thereby avoiding most referrals to the dermatologist.

Mission and Vision

AISC wants to enable doctors to diagnose skin and mole cancer correctly and quickly and minimize the amount of removed benign skin lesions.

To reach that goal, the AISC Research Consortium wants to make patient data benefit doctors and patients alike, but with complete anonymity and safety. We see no reason for each doctor to having to learn seeing one patient at a time, making his or her own mistakes that thousands of other doctors have done before.

Correctly separating melanoma from atypical nevi is challenging, and the result is the referral of an overabundance of benign skin lesions. AISC is trying to reduce the amount of defensive medical actions that are being taking by doctors.
Can the use of a teledermatological second opinion and an accurate and easy follow-up function reduce the amount of benign referrals and speed up the time from diagnosis to treatment for the patients with actual malignancy?

We will reduce the amount of excised benign skin lesions and help allocate the scares recourses to where they actually matter. We want to raise the diagnostic competence of all doctors that diagnose and treat skin and mole cancer, for the benefit the patient, for the doctor that can feel uncertain about the decisions made and for society as a whole.
Gustav Gede Nervil, AISC Researcher

The doctors and clinician can use every skin lesion seen as a possibility for education and clinical feedback, from the dermatologist, the plastic surgeon and/or the pathologists.

And not just education for one self, but for colleagues, students and future colleagues.

The current “Gold Standard” in diagnosing melanoma and skin cancer is the histopathological evaluation. This method of evaluation has a high, but not perfect sensitivity or specificity.
As a side project AISC is investigating if an AI enhanced diagnostic tool can introduce a more precise measurement to either replace or augment the current histopathological evaluation.

AISC Timeline

April 2021
- Case Library hits 14.000 patient cases
- Preparations for the AISC-GP Trial has commenced as General Practitioners from three clinics got trial access to DermLoop Learn and DermLoop Capture.
- Nurse Practitioners are included in the pilot trial
- The Internal Research Grant from Herlev and Gentofte Hospital is granted to the AISC Research consortium
- An additional one thousand patient cases are vetted and admitted to the DermLoop Learn training setting
- Medical Anthropologist, Maya Levin Schtulberg, starts her research employment. Welcome Maya!
March 2021
- First clinical implementation, at Department of Plastic Surgery, Herlev Hospital
- First real user receives clinical feedback on a registered patient case.
- First user bug-feedback received and fixed
- Dermloop Learn users gains access to 46 diagnostic modules
- Dermloop Pathology is live at Herlev hospital, and the first clinical feedback from a pathologist is given on an actual patient case to the treating doctor
- The educational library hits 10,000 cases!
February 2021
- AISC Research Website goes live
- Two engineering students from DTU joins the AISC collaboration
- First AI visual diagnostic results are reported
Januar 2021
- AISC DAH Trial includes patient #250 and ceases patient inclusion
- The first AISC Anthropologist is broad onboard to collaborate on a qualitative study regarding the educational technology, the clinicians thoughts about using DermLoop and its influence on the patient-doctor relationship
- The LEE AISC data extraction crew reaches 10% of our set goal
December 2020
- MelaTech partner initiates collaboration with UiT (Arctic University of Norway) and DTU (Danish Technical University)
- The LEE AISC data extraction crew is initiated with 5 additional medical students
- Collaboration established with Research Unit for General Practice, UCPH.
- AISC DAH Trial includes patient #150
November 2020
- MelaTech delivers first minimal viable product of the DermLoop Capture
- Melanoma learning modules are sent for international review
- AISC DAH Trial initiates patient enrollment
- Case library hits 5000 cases
- AISC secures additional funding. Special thanks to the “Kunstig intelligens pulje 2020 – Region Hovedstaden”
October 2020
- Danish Cancer Society grants “Early Detection” funds to AISC with financial support to the first clinical study; The AISC-GP Trial
- AISC-ERB Trial granted waiver from Danish Research Ethics Committee.
- DermLoop Capture mockup and beta-testing in collaboration with MelaTech
September 2020

The hiring spree!
- One additional full time researcher begins a PhD under AISC Research Consortium. Gustav will be conducting the clinical trials of the DermLoop educational intervention. Welcome Gustav!
- Medical Illustrator, Maria, is hired and starts working on 3D illustrations and animations for the learning modules. Welcome Maria!
- Post Doc, Morten from DTU, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, starts working full time on the DermLoop AI. Welcome Morten!
- Case library hits 4000 extracted cases
- The protocol for the first AISC clinical trial has been submitted and accepted on ClinicalTrials.Gov
- Ethics Approval for the AISC-DAH Trial has been obtained
- Ethics Approval for the AISC-HV Trial has been obtained
- “Forum” function has been developed for DermLoop Learn module
- Initial ENN architecture tried in a feasibility study for case-difficulty assessment
August 2020
- Louisa, Medical Student, initiates full time employment at AISC, accelerating the data extraction.
- DermLoop Learn usertests conducted
- The “validation module” is developed and functional, required for all future clinical DermLoop studies
- Medical Student, Christoffer, has accepted a scholarship starting from February 2021. Christoffer will be investigating the discrepancies between the diagnosis of AI and pathologists with the AISC-HV Trial. Welcome Christoffer.