Figure 1 raises $4 million to boost its medical photo sharing service

Figure 1

While popular images on photo-sharing apps like Instagram are likely to include cute animals, beautiful landscapes or delectable food and drink, the images on Figure 1 have less appeal, at least to the untrained eye. The main goal of this app is to make the practice and learning of medicine a more communal experience.

More than 125,000 health-care professionals use Figure 1 to view or share free medical imagery, such as x-rays; charts; and still images taken from MRI or CAT scans.Among the most-shared images on the Figure 1 iOS and Android apps have been an X-Ray of a patient suffering from the viral respiratory illness MERS and a photo of the torso of a lightning strike survivor, with a marking called the “Licthenberg figure” (that traces a path of electricity through her body to the ground). Today, more than 125,000 health-care professionals use Figure 1 to view or share free medical imagery, including photos of patients with personally identifiable details blurred out or excluded; x-rays; charts; and still images taken from MRI or CAT scans.

The app’s users include board-certified doctors, registered nurses, medical and nursing students, physicians’ assistants, and others who use the app to share images for teaching and studying purposes, or request community feedback about a possible diagnosis.

Toronto-based Figure 1 Inc. has raised $4 million in Series A venture funding to grow its photo-sharing app for health-care professionals, according to co-founder Gregory Levey. Mr. Levey says that the company plans to use its new funding to bolster its technical infrastructure, create “localized” versions of the app for medical professionals around the world, and to potentially double headcount in the next year in Toronto. The Figure 1 app generates about one million daily image views, and has more than 60,000 comments to date.

[Via: WSJ]