Figure 1, a popular free photo-sharing platform for healthcare professionals was recently made available in India. The app enables healthcare professionals and students across the globe to connect, discuss, and share content. Dr Gregory Levey, CEO & Co-Founder, Figure 1, shares more details of the app, its uses in the Indian scenario and more, in an interaction with Lakshmipriya Nair
What are the USPs of Figure 1?
Figure 1 is a community of hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals around the world who are sharing and discussing medical cases. Healthcare professionals can view visual cases that they might not otherwise see in their practice – all in a way that protects patient privacy. Seeing cases from other healthcare professionals in other parts of the world helps them expand their experience more rapidly. They can weigh in on these cases too, especially those that are framed as questions, which help test their knowledge in a real-world setting.
Additionally, healthcare professionals can use the community for feedback by posting images. To do this, they take an image, remove the identifying information, and upload it with relevant case information. Posts on Figure 1 generally gather a lot of discussion from many kinds of healthcare professionals within minutes.
What are the opportunities and challenges you foresee for Figure 1 in India?
We are very excited about the opportunities for Figure 1 in India. We think Figure 1 can be used to connect healthcare professionals across the country – especially across its large urban-rural divide. We also think that instant access to collaboration with healthcare professionals all over the world will be useful for Indian healthcare professionals. With smartphones being so prevalent in India, we think there’s a huge opportunity for all of the 800,000 physicians and 1.5 million nurses, midwives and medical students to join Figure 1.
There are challenges that come with serving a global market, which is why we’ve waited to come to India despite the demand for Figure 1. Before launching in India, we worked with Indian healthcare privacy lawyers, and we expanded the number of people on our team in order to make sure we could meet these challenges.
How will it serve in the Indian scenario which needs affordable solutions to improve healthcare access?
Figure 1 is a free tool that will help physicians in rural areas by giving them access to specialists practising in major urban centres around the world.
What are your plans for the Indian market? Any tie-ups underway?
Recently our team was in Mumbai and Delhi meeting healthcare professionals who are joining our Indian Ambassador and Fellows Programs. The Ambassador Program is made up of medical and nursing students who represent Figure 1. The Fellows Program is for practising healthcare professionals who guide the direction of the community. We are excited to start these programmes in India for the first time.
What is the revenue model for Figure 1?
We are currently funded by long-term focused investors and are not focused on revenue.
You recently raised funds worth four million dollars. How will it be utilised?
We were excited to close a Series A funding round with Union Square Ventures (early investors in Twitter, Tumblr, Etsy and Kickstarter) last year. Since then, we’ve used the money to help expand internationally and to hire more staff.
lakshmipriya.nair@expressindia.com