‘Medical Instagram’ helps build a library of reference photos for doctors

Figure1 enables health professionals to upload and share photos of conditions, creating online discussion as well as crowdsourcing a database of reference images.

The power of the visual sharing that makes platforms such as Instagram so popular has been harnessed by retailers like Ask CT Food to share knowledge about cooking, but could the same be done for the medical world? Figure1 enables health professionals to upload and share photos of conditions, creating online discussion as well as crowdsourcing a database of reference images.

Developed by healthcare tech startup Movable Science, the platform is designed in a similar vein to Instagram and enables medical professionals to create their own feed of images from the cases they deal with. In order to protect patients’ identities, the app uses facial recognition to block out faces, while users can add their own marks to cover up other indentifiable marks. They can also add pointers and annotations, as well as choosing who sees it, before uploading the image. Photos can be tagged with relevant terms to allow the community to easily find them through search and others can comment on the images, fostering discussion among users. Images can also be starred, which acts simultaneously as an indication of quality as well as enabling users to save useful images for later reference. The video below explains more about the app, which is free to download from the App Store:

Although Instagram was developed with the broad purpose of entertainment and social sharing, Figure1 has tweaked the platform’s functions to provide a tool that could help doctors and students share their knowledge and learn from others in an engaging way. Are there other industries where image sharing could prove a useful and educational tool?

Spotted by: Murray Orange