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Comment by shambolicfroli | Hacker News Reader

Hmm. When I had a skin cancer excised by a surgeon, in a followup visit a woman with no ID came in and made a point of taking closeup photos of full-face and profile. When I asked she said this was standard (for minor skin cancer removal). (Same place, where I walked into the room for the procedure, they had Carole King singing "it's too late" at loud volume on a portable stereo sitting on the ground.)

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I was considering doing a startup addressing skin cancer and a number of Mohs surgeons were happy to have me come in and observe the entire process. To the patients they'd just say "he's observing today" and not even introduce me or ask the patient (or me) to sign anything.

I have a friend whose startup cared was doing a surgical product; after I told him my story he called up a bunch of plastic surgeons and went and observed a bunch of them.

Both of us were interested in workflow; the actual science we had done on animals of course, but our research was aimed at seeing if the product would be viable (could be medically wonderful but if the doctors don't care they won't use it on the patients, even if it improves outcome).

I don't think we could have done this at a hospital, but given that it was surgery (surgeons have a lot of freedom) perhaps we could have.

This is like something from Black Mirror or Maniac.

How carefully did you check the surgeon's ID?

Yes it's standard practice for many dermatology procedures. They need a baseline to check for changes during follow up exams. Sometimes they do a poor job of communicating this to patients. You can always refuse.

When I had a skin cancer excised by a surgeon, in a followup visit a woman with no ID came in and made a point of taking closeup photos of full-face and profile. When I asked she said this was standard (for minor skin cancer removal).

I had that happen to me, but it wasn't my face where the excision happened, or that was photographed, so it may really be standard procedure. My guess is so that in follow-up examinations it can be determined if any remnants remain and/or spread.

But my incident was about 20 years ago. Today I would be very suspicious, like you are.

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