Defender Awards honor Australian team using AI skin checks to save lives across remote regions

An Australian team using AI technology to perform skin checks on people in remote locations has been honored by the Defender Awards.

The Defender Awards honor good deeds across four categories – land, wild, humanity, and sea.

From 56 shortlist entries, seven winners were chosen – and one winner was an Australian healthcare charity.

For its important work, Skin Check Champions was given a Defender 4×4, a $200,000 bursary, and expert mentorship.

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Why was this Australian charity honored by the Defender Awards?

The Australian winner was decided by a panel of expert judges:

• Mark Cameron, the Defender Managing Director
• Dr. Moreanggels Mbizah, the founder of Wildlife Conservation Action
• Tyson Mayr, a National Geographic filmmaker
• Max Muench, a landscape photographer
• Bertrand Piccard, environmentalist and founder of Solar Pulse Foundation
• Alessandra Mastronardi, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
• Michiaki Matsushima, the Moonshot Ambassador for the Cabinet Office

They were to pick seven winners out of a line-up of 56 noble causes.

One of the lucky winners was Skin Check Champions, a charity that has worked to detect skin cancer across Australia for over a decade.

It has carried out 25,000 skin checks for people in remote locations and identified more than 600 potential melanomas and 1,800 non-melanoma skin cancers.

Thanks to AI technology, it’s helped regional nurses detect skin cancers early.

It’s also setting up healthcare networks to train doctors in communities at high risk of cancer.

The Defender 4×4 awarded to the charity will be used as the primary tow vehicle for the charity’s mobile clinic.

This will enable the Skin Check Champions team to reach more rural communities living on tougher roads.

“Every one of the award nominees is making a real difference to the planet and embodies the true spirit of Defender,” Dr Moreangels Mbizah said of the winners.

“We hope our community-led winners will thrive and flourish with the support offered by Defender and make an even bigger positive impact around the globe.”

People are finding more and more ways to use AI for good

We’ve been hearing an awful lot about AI these past few years, and it’s not all been positive news.

Opinions were divided on this Coca-Cola advert, for example.

And James Cameron took a stand by declaring that the upcoming Avatar movie would not have any AI at all.

But it is important to remember that it can be used for good, in a whole variety of ways.

Even when it comes to something as seemingly mundane as an oil change, Google Gemini can come in handy.

For one family, AI helped them reduce their hospital bills from $195,000 all the way down to $33,000.

So, it’s a mixed bag, you could say – like a lot of technological advancements throughout human history.

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