Why We Built MySkinIQ

When Lindsey and I had kids, something changed in her body. Her hands started blistering and burning — not occasionally, but persistently, painfully, in ways that made everyday life genuinely difficult.

What followed was years of medical engagements that, if we're honest, caused more suffering than they solved. Appointments, treatments, topical prescriptions, dietary theories — none of it landed on the real answer. The medical system, doing its best, kept pointing in the wrong direction. Meanwhile Lindsey's hands kept hurting.

The Answer Came from Patch Testing

The answer finally came through patch testing — a diagnostic process where an allergist applies small amounts of known allergens to the skin over several days to identify contact triggers. The results were clear: Propylene Glycol was the primary culprit. It's a preservative and humectant found in an enormous range of personal care products — moisturizers, hand creams, shampoos, medications, even some foods. Along with a few other common chemical ingredients, it had been causing her immune system to react every single time she touched something containing it.

Once we knew, we assumed the hard part was over. We were wrong.

Knowing Wasn't Enough

Finding products that didn't contain Lindsey's allergens turned out to be its own ordeal. The existing tools — apps and databases designed to help people with contact allergies shop safely — were either poorly maintained, missing the products she actually used, or too clinical to be practical. The ingredient lists on product packaging are long, dense, and written in INCI nomenclature that most people can't parse. Knowing what to avoid doesn't help much when you can't quickly tell whether it's in the bottle you're holding.

Propylene Glycol appears under multiple names. It hides in products labeled "natural" and "gentle." It's in medications, dental products, and personal care items that seem entirely unrelated to skincare. Even armed with her patch test results, Lindsey spent significant time in store aisles Googling INCI names one by one, comparing synonyms, hoping she wasn't missing anything.

So We Built the Thing We Wished Existed

Lindsey is a product manager. I work in cybersecurity and product. Neither of us is a software engineer — so I did something that would have seemed impossible a few years ago. I learned to build software using AI as my coding partner. Between Lindsey's instinct for what a real user actually needs and my ability to bring it to life technically, MySkinIQ started to become real.

We built it first for Lindsey. We believe it can help a lot of people like her.

MySkinIQ scans any personal care product — by barcode or by photographing the ingredient list — and instantly checks it against your personal allergen profile and a database of known contact allergens. It handles ingredient synonyms, flags cross-reactive compounds, and gives you a clear answer in seconds rather than 20 minutes of manual research.

We're Just Getting Started

This is a v1 made by two people who care deeply about getting it right. We're sharing it now because we want feedback from the community it was built for — people who know exactly what it feels like to spend 20 minutes in a store aisle trying to decode an ingredient label, or to finally get patch test results and realize the real work is still ahead of you.

We're not a funded startup. We're not trying to sell you anything. We're two people who built a thing because we needed it and couldn't find it. If you've been through a similar experience — years of reactions, dead-end treatments, a patch test that finally gave you answers — we'd genuinely love to hear from you. Your feedback is directly shaping what we build next.