App developed by McGill med student helps detect melanoma
Source: Health e-News, January 2025
During his rotations as a medical student at McGill University, Roy Khalaf met a patient whose metastatic melanoma had spread to his brain and other areas of his body. Coming to terms with his unfortunate fate, the patient – a father of three children under five – regretted he hadn’t been able to detect the cancer earlier, when treatment might have been more effective.
His story stayed with Khalaf, who is in his final year of med school at McGill. “It made me think there should be an app for the general public to identify the presenting signs of melanoma and be able to monitor their moles with the help of a physician,” he said. The aspiring doctor went on to develop Melanoscope, a web-based app that helps monitor the growth of moles that appear on the skin.
Khalaf worked for eight months with a group of developers to come up with the user-friendly, bilingual app which is free on the Apple app store, and will be available soon on Google Play.