Being able to practice medicine takes many years of training, not to mention a serious financial outlay in tuition fees. Or, if dermatology is your specialty, then all you need is a new handy iPhone attachment.

Handyscope is an attachment that, along with the accompanying app, turns your iPhone in a dermatoscope to take pictures of and help diagnose skin conditions.

In truth, rather than enabling patients to diagnose themselves, it seems the Handyscope is something aimed towards doctors to be able to communicate quickly to colleagues, patients and students.

Using German company FotoFinder's medical imagining systems to capture images that enable users to magnify the image 20x the Handyscope system doesn't come cheapwith wannabe skin experts to fork out around £1,000 for the device.

Giuseppe Argenziano, MD, Naples, Italy said: "I have been using this brand new dermoscopy device for a few days and, immediately, I enjoyed both the speed in taking pictures and the vivid colors and the quality of dermoscopic structures made visible by the handyscope.

"This device will not replace my mole mapping system to monitor my patients, but it represents a new way to
take fast pictures of some special cases and a new way to share them with colleagues, students, and patients.”

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