BATON ROUGE — Itchy skin, swollen patches and a red, angry rash are all common symptoms of skin allergies, which impact nearly one in five people.

"That is when a substance comes into contact with the skin and causes a reaction,” dermatologist at the Mayo Clinic Allison Bruce said.

You may think of poison ivy triggering a reaction, but Bruce says jewelry, fragrances, lotions and many more substances can cause a skin reaction known as contact dermatitis.

"What happens is the skin just turns red, itchy, flaky, scaly, kind of sometimes becomes fissured, if it's very severe, kind of becomes so red and inflamed that the skin breaks down and you get little cracks and crevices in the skin,” Bruce said.

A new tool in development at Mayo Clinic aims to help patients and their healthcare team determine the cause of the reaction.

"We've been working on an AI tool to help with skin allergy testing, because in current state, if you suspect that, as a patient or your doctor suspects that you have allergic contact dermatitis, the way to test for that would be through patch testing,” Bruce said.

But testing can be time-consuming, requiring patients to return to the dermatologist's office multiple days.

"The idea behind having AI enhance what we're doing is, if you can imagine a situation where instead of going into your dermatologist, you were able to put the patches on your skin yourself, remove them at a predetermined time, and then use your cell phone, use the camera on your cell phone to image those reactions, and then AI would be potentially able to interpret the reactions to. Yes, there's a red reaction that corresponds to nickel, and therefore, you're
allergic to nickel,” Bruce said.

Dr. Bruce says the new tool can improve the lives of those having skin reactions by making diagnoses more accessible and faster for patients.

"It can be done remotely. It can be done with imaging, AI interpretation, etc. It really broadens the reach of people who need care that can't always make it to places like Mayo Clinic,” Bruce said.