Over the last 10 years, Figure 1 has become the most unique place online for healthcare professionals to connect and collaborate through medical case sharing. To celebrate, we’re reflecting on where we started and how far we’ve come.
And the celebration would not be complete without recognizing and thanking our incredible community. From sharing interesting cases to helping a colleague, our members have made Figure 1 what it is today.
How It All Started
In 2012, Dr. Josh Landy began studying how clinicians were using mobile phones in their daily practice. They were often taking photos with their cell phones and sharing them with their colleagues for feedback over text or email—not an ideal way to share clinical images with sensitive patient information.
He shared his observations with some longtime friends. Together, they had an idea: Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app for that?
And in 2013, Figure 1 was launched. The very first version of the platform gave healthcare professionals a safe way to share clinical photos; protecting patient privacy with face blockers, annotation tools, and a keen-eyed moderation team.
Over the next decade, a community of physicians, nurses, and other allied professionals from more than 190 countries came together to form a trustworthy peer-to-peer knowledge sharing platform. Today, thanks to collegial collaboration, our members are helping to lower healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes.
Where We Are Today
These days, we represent a new form of modern medical learning, with a real-time lens on the medical world. And we continue to innovate, from our DDx podcast to our partnerships with leaders in healthcare.
Webby Awards
In 2022, we were awarded a Webby Award for the Webby People’s Voice Award for Best App in the Experimental & Innovation category. Achieved with votes from our members and supporters, the award recognizes Figure 1 as a valued, innovative platform for medical knowledge sharing, discovery, and collaboration.
100,000 Cases Milestone
We’ve also hit an incredible milestone of having over 100,000 medical cases uploaded to the platform. This makes Figure 1 the world’s largest library of medical cases—created by real healthcare professionals. This achievement marked the first step toward our next ambitious goal: to collect 1 million cases and become the world’s most comprehensive source of real-world medical knowledge.
DDx Podcast
Our top-rated DDx podcast, is a medical podcast about how doctors think and learn on the job. DDx is medical shorthand for differential diagnosis, a system of analysis designed to identify the root cause of complex patient symptoms. Each 10-minute episode is hosted by Dr. Raj Bhardwaj and explores complex areas of medicine and difficult medical cases.
The most recent season, sponsored by the Cleveland Clinic, tells the stories of high-risk obstetricians who perform one of the most essential procedures in medicine—abortion. The season has been downloaded almost 10,000 times and has been streamed for over 235 hours.
Partnerships
Medical organizations from around the world use our platform to post educational content and have been key to our success over the past 10 years.
In collaboration with the Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi), we developed an innovative approach to acquiring continuing medical education (CME) credits by reviewing medical cases on our platform. We also created an exclusive space for MedChi and its members to share upcoming events, announcements, and clinical knowledge.
Other key partners include Cincinnati Children’s Radiology, with hundreds of pediatric radiology cases posted; the Medical University of South Carolina, sharing artful medical photography; and Cochrane with its latest research and medical reviews.
Our mission over the last 10 years has been to democratize medical knowledge and improve the future of healthcare. And we couldn’t be prouder that every day, healthcare professionals use Figure 1 to teach, learn, and grow—all for the purpose of making a difference in people’s lives.