Your phone can help you identify common skin conditions

Google Lens, the visual search powerhouse, has now gone beyond its usual remit of identifying your backyard flora or avian visitor, it’s now serving as a preliminary skin check tool. Although not intended to replace professional medical evaluation, this feature comes as an unexpected but rather welcome enhancement.

With Google Lens, you can take a snap within the app, or upload a pre-existing image from your device, and the intelligent software will come back to you with image-based links that are visually akin to your input. Although it’s not infallible – in one instance, it confused a slightly elevated mole for a wart – the tool certainly helps when you have something you want to look up but lack the exact terminology to narrow down search results.

Hunting through endless pages of skin condition images to pinpoint your unique concern isn’t a pleasant or efficient experience. Google Lens aims to alleviate some of this burden.

Google stated, “Communicating the specifics of a peculiar mole or rash can be challenging using only words. Fortunately, Lens now offers a novel solution by enabling searches for skin conditions that visually resemble what you’ve noticed on your skin. This feature can be handy even when you’re uncertain about how to articulate other concerns, like a bump on your lip, a streak on your nails, or hair loss.”