TULSA, Okla. — Two University of Tulsa graduates found a way to access healthcare at your fingertips.
Julian Abhari and Daniel Marques are the cofounders of SkinCheck, which allows people to potentially detect skin cancer with a click of a button.
The two students are a duo unlike any other. Their mission to make dermatological care accessible to everyone began with a friendship at 16 years old.
“Julian and I have been friends for over six years,” Marques said. “I came from Brazil as a foreign exchange student, and he was my best friend's neighbor."
Fate, perhaps, played a role in what these two have dreamed up. However, it all began with Abhari’s personal story.
“When my mom was 27, she battled multiple cases of skin cancer all throughout my childhood,” he said.
As a kid, Abhari said he was obsessed with computer programming. By high school, he became interested in artificial intelligence.
“The idea of making a skin cancer detection tool was really important to me and my family, so I got started creating a prototype," he said.
Abhari began building on that prototype, working with TU professors to eventually create the app SkinCheck.
And then there's Marques, with a focus on entrepreneurship and venture capital.
“When I was in undergrad, I started the first incubator venture fund focusing on students in Oklahoma,” he said.
Marques brought Abhari on board, and eventually, the two turned SkinCheck into a start-up company. They hit the ground running.
“SkinCheck is a mobile tool to help people determine their skin cancer risks and risk factors and expedites their access to treatment,” Abhari said.
The app is free. It allows the user to take a photo of the skin lesion. Once the photo is stored, the user is prompted to choose a skin tone, making it the first racially unbiased skincare protection software.
The app then pulls other skin lesions to compare with your own, either confirmed to be benign, or cancerous. The user can determine which examples best match their own. This can be done by taking note of the lesion characteristics.
The app can monitor changes over time with personalized tracking criteria.
The future of the app is to launch in August. The Cofounders expect to launch a Telehealth Connect feature, directly connecting users to a provider.
‘If we wanted to, we could get an expert diagnosis, and we can save this for them to be tracked for further viewing,” Abhari said of the app’s future feature.
SkinCheck's goal is to then connect you with dermatologists to get you the help you need promptly.
“Because one of the main problems is the access to dermatological care,” Marque said. “If you call a clinic around Oklahoma, or any other state, and you are not an existing client, you're going to have to wait three to four months."
SkinCheck hopes to do away with that by eliminating a life-threatening situation with early detection.
With already more than 100,000 users, SkinCheck gives credit to the University of Tulsa.
The Hurricane Venture fund became the company’s first institutionary investor.
Abhari and Marque have made TU proud, becoming the first Oklahoma company ever to be selected as a finalist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Pitch Competition.
From there, the app continues to grow, even expanding to service other countries.
For more on SkinCheck and how to download, click here.
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