Timothy August
Timothy August is a dermatology Physician Assistant who graduated from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1998 and later received his MPAS through UNMC in 2001. He now owns and operates Dermatology on Demand, Inc.
About Tim
The common thread in Tim’s work is simple: helping dermatology practices run well, from the front desk to the exam room. He has worked as a clinician in private practice dermatology throughout his career, and most of what he has built grew out of problems he ran into there.
Training
Dermatology support staff had no specialty-specific place to learn, so in 2012 he wrote the online course behind the Association of Certified Dermatology Techs. Its Certified Dermatology Tech program has since trained tens of thousands of dermatology medical assistants. More recently he added Front Desk Essentials, an 11-lesson course for people new to dermatology reception and checkout.
Dermatoscopes & Dermoscopy
In 2019 he launched Dermatoscopes.com, an authorized Dermlite distributor, along with dozens of training videos and articles to help clinicians choose a dermatoscope and learn dermoscopy.
Both interests came together in 2026, when Dermatoscopes.com was selected through a competitive public bid to supply nearly 1,500 dermatoscopes, plus dermoscopy training, to primary care clinicians across rural Iowa. The work is part of a state rural health program funded through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program.
AI for Business
Tim's work with AI began the way it does for most business and medical practice owners: trying to make the familiar online platforms carry real business tasks, and finding that they could answer questions but not do the work. His response was to build his own AI workstation, with local models running alongside commercial ones and an agent connected directly to the systems his businesses run on. Examples of how he now puts AI to work include:
- Customer correspondence drafted in his own voice, learned from years of his actual ("human") replies rather than a one-line style instruction, and sent from his real inbox.
- Order processing against the live store: purchase orders, tracking numbers, refunds, and invoices handled in the e-commerce and payment systems themselves, not copied in and out of a chat window.
- Work that runs unattended: scheduled checks, reminders, monitoring, and overnight processing jobs that proceed without anyone at the keyboard.
- Sensitive data kept on his own hardware: clinical references, customer records, and recorded audio are processed locally, where patient privacy rules can actually be met.
- Verified publishing: clinical and medication content checked against two independent sources, with a second AI model reviewing for accuracy and clarity before anything goes live.
- Finished deliverables, not drafts: courses, training videos, documents, and slide decks produced to a consistent house standard, with the AI holding the standards from one project to the next.
- A system that remembers the business: written procedures, policies, and prior decisions the AI follows and updates, so each task builds on the last instead of starting from zero.
Building and operating that system has given him a grounded view of what AI can and cannot do for a small business or medical practice, what it actually costs, and where it belongs on equipment you control. That is the standpoint from which he advises clinicians and practice managers on where to start, what to spend, and what to leave alone
If any of that overlaps with what you’re working on, reach out.