Treating and documenting skin lesions simultaneously

A dermatology practice won a $10,000 new-technology honorarium at a national conference in July, and did so with help from Rose-Hulman Ventures.

Katherine Lee, MD, FAAD, founded Halcyon Dermatology in Laguna Hills, California. She says one of her clinic’s most common procedures is cryotherapy, in which dermatologists freeze skin lesions using a handheld canister of liquid nitrogen. It’s a two-handed task, because most lesions can’t be easily seen, only felt. “I have to use my left hand to feel for lesions and my right hand to spray and hold the canister,” Dr. Lee says.

The problem is, it takes yet another hand to handle the documentation required for insurance reimbursement. “I have to have a scribe to help mark on their computer where I treated, and the diagnosis.”

That’s especially important when patients have a lot of lesions that need treatment—some have as many as 80 lesions that require freezing. Lee says it’s impossible to remember the locations and details of that many tasks, but insurance companies require her to document each separate location and diagnosis.

“We wanted to come up with a solution that would allow a provider to perform the treatment and document at the same time,” she says. So, she worked with Rose-Hulman Ventures. The result of the collaboration was dubbed CryoCaptures — an integrated hardware and software solution featuring a thermal camera that photographs treated lesions.

“If you try to take an image of a lesion with a regular camera, you cannot see it,” Dr. Lee says. “With thermal imaging, we see the areas we treated because of the temperature difference.”

Lee says the initial idea involved a wearable solution, but the battery life of the camera that would require wasn’t good enough. She says Rose-Hulman Ventures developed an alternative using a different thermal camera, attached to the liquid nitrogen canister with an adapter. “That solved a lot of problems, and we don’t have the battery-life issue,” she says.

Currently, the adapter is 3D-printed, ideal because it will allow easier revisions in the future. “The thermal camera might change in size and shape as it is upgraded, so we wanted an adapter that can be easily modified,” Dr. Lee says.

After the thermal camera takes pictures, third-party machine-learning software processes and summarizes the images. After that, it’s ready to be put into electronic medical records. No scribe needed.

Dr. Lee submitted the CryoCaptures prototype to a competition called Derm Tank, which is hosted by the American Academy of Dermatology. Rose-Hulman Ventures interns helped make it possible. “We were trying to get everything ready before July for the competition, and they were great in meeting the deadline,” she says. “For the competition we had to have five working prototypes, and they were able to get that in time.”

Twenty businesses competed, and Dr. Lee’s company was one of three finalists. She gave a presentation and then answered questions about CryoCaptures. She touted the ability for providers to treat and document at the same time. “This will allow providers to decrease their labor costs, as they will not need as many medical assistants,” she says.

The panel of judges declared Dr. Lee’s company the first-place winner and presented a $10,000 honorarium to CryoCaptures.
Dr. Lee says working with Rose-Hulman Ventures interns was great. “It was amazing how talented the students are,” she says. “They are very responsive and have a lot of creative ideas. It was really exciting to see our future engineers in action.”

She says CryoCaptures technology will enter beta testing in October. She wants to keep working with Rose-Hulman Ventures to produce a small batch of devices and scale up.