Six months post-launch, medical photo sharing app Figure 1 has attracted tens of thousands of users and now $2 million in venture and angel funds to expand to new platforms.
Though it’s often referred to in the media as “Instagram for doctors,” the crowdsourced, searchable repository of medical images is more than another photo-sharing app, according to its founders. Medical professionals can upload photos of interesting, puzzling or straight-from-the-textbook medical cases and participate in discussion around them while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
The app, which allows users to upload, annotate and control the share settings for photos, also lets other users comment, earmark or email photos they’re interest in. It also features a consent form for patients to sign and has auto-blocking features to hide faces, text or distinctive body markings it detects in photos, for the sake of protecting the privacy of the photo subjects. (Read Dr. Bryan Vartabedian’s critical review of the app here.)
Investors including Canadian VC firms Version One Ventures and Rho Canada Ventures likely agree with the founders on the platform’s potential. They’ve just led a $2 million seed round for Figure 1 that was joined by the Investment Accelerator Fund in Ontario, Ryerson Futures, and a number of angel investors.
The startup and its offering of the same name were formed by critical care physician Dr. Joshua Landy, mobile developer Richard Penner and writer Gregory Levey early this year. The iPhone and iPad app launched in the U.S. and Canada this summer, expanded to the UK earlier this fall and integrated with physician network Doximity.
Next up, the founders are looking to hire a developer for desktop and Android versions of the app to be released in the coming months.
When MedCity News first wrote about Figure 1 back in August, Landy chalked up the initial popularity of the app to just doctors being doctors. “In medicine there tends to be a culture of sharing interesting findings with each other,” he said. “After you spend 10 to 12 years training, learning and sharing new findings becomes second-nature to the way you practice.”
