If you’re a skincare professional, you’ve probably heard of the Fitzpatrick Scale.
Developed in 1975 by Thomas B. Fitzpatrick as a way to measure the response of different types of skin to ultraviolet light, it has a numeric scale with 6 classifications varying by melanin amount.
It was originally created to estimate the amount of damage caused by the sun to those with lighter tones, we now know that everyone needs sun protection regardless of how deep their tone is. But years later, biases like this are still plaguing the skincare industry. Fortunately, a series of funding is helping to bolster a new company’s efforts to make the skincare experience more equitable.
It was recently reported that Revea recently raised more than $6 million.
Revea is an AI-based company that’s aiming to make targeted and effective skincare available for everyone. The San Francisco company is are aiming to expand the experience through a mobile offering via Hyperspectral Imaging and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The funding will help them scale.
“It’s no secret that historically skincare product development was not representative. It was based on small, non-representative data sets and limited supply chains that could never reflect or serve the diversity of our world. Revea set out to change that –to make skincare without bias. For the last three years, we have been building the data and technology platform to do just that. Now we are extending that technology even further using Hyperspectral Imaging and AI to bring our lab experience to the mobile phone,” Revea Founder Chaz Giles wrote in an email interview with AfroTech.