DermDetect wins Rep. Suzan DelBene’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Washington’s First District

Rep. Suzan DelBene has named Soham Bhosale from Bothell High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Washington’s First District.

When asked what inspired the creation of DermDetect, the student said, “There were over 7230 melanoma-related deaths in the U.S.A alone during 2019, with Washington State being among the top ten states for highest skin cancer incidence. This is especially disheartening as skin cancer diagnosis at an early stage has the potential to drastically reduce the harm caused by the disease (a 95% 5 year survival rate), however significant roadblocks to this include that biopsy is a labor-intensive and invasive procedure, and many individuals, especially in rural communities, do not prefer to visit the hospital for what may seem to be a minor skin injury. The COVID-19 Pandemic has emphasized the need for quality remote checkups and diagnoses. Hence, I attempted to use widespread mobile technology and effective machine learning technology to create an app that would serve as a go-to for preliminary analysis of any suspicious skin lesion.”

The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.

The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.

The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.