A new photo-sharing platform is giving doctors an Instagram-like approach to clinical decision support.
Figure1 enables healthcare providers to take a quick photograph of a puzzling medical issue, then post it in a secure online network for discussion among peers. The idea is that the image and resulting conversation will help healthcare professionals learn more about unique or unusual cases and, as a result, make better diagnoses and care management decisions for their patients.
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"It's an almanac of all the visual findings in medicine," says Figure1 founder Josh Landy, an intensive care specialist at Toronto's Scarborough Hospital.
The old 'A picture is worth a thousand words' adage fits ideally into Landy's plan, and is a key component in the development of real-time support tools for providers. In this case, speed and anonymity are vital. A doctor can take a picture, strip out all the identifying information, upload the image and then sit back and wait for responses from other doctors around the world.
"It really is a social network," says Landy, who came up with the idea after noticing how many doctors were carrying – and using – smartphones in his hospital.
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Launched in 2013, Figure1 is now being used in more than 100 countries ("I lost count after 115," Landy says) by hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals, amounting to more than 1.5 million viewings a day, on average. It exists as an interactive library, with safeguards in place – each image must be approved by the patient, only healthcare professionals are allowed in the network, and the images are screened in a queue before going live.
Rather than being considered a diagnostic tool, Figure1 is more a social media link to second, third and fourth opinions, says Landy, who envisions someday adding image analytics and beefing up its CDS capabilities. "In many cases the discussion is more important than the image itself," he adds. "Somebody can see something, and then the conversation will branch out into three or four different directions … and you get this sharing of knowledge."
Landy is also quick to point out that Figure1 isn’t an arcade of provocative photos – a 'Weekly World News' for the casual consumer, as it were. The images and conversation that they prompt are strictly educational.
"We don't want any sensational content," he says. "Nothing shocking or gory. I've been very impressed, in fact, by what people are sharing and what they want to do on the network. "
"It's classic medicine, digitized," said Sheryll Shipes, a third-year medical student at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial in Texas, said in a recent CNN interview. She used the app to help diagnose a patient with a skin disorder that she hadn't seen before.
"I uploaded it to Figure1 and someone told us exactly what it was," Shipes said, noting it was common in Latin America and Asia. "We would never have known that one."
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