Image: Figure 1.

I am sure there were many times over the years, when you visited a doctor, you wanted a second opinion, right then and there. Just a few weeks ago, I visited my dermatologist and thought for sure I had another basal cell carcinoma on my leg. When he told me my skin was clear, I wished that I had another doctor confirming his diagnosis. The news was too good to be true.

The day of doctors conferring with each other, right on the spot, is finally here. Say hello to Instagram For Doctors. Created by Dr.Josh Landy, a Canadian Internist, the new app is called Figure 1. It lets doctors upload medical photos, explore others, and discuss them with the network of medical professionals. The app was designed to safeguard all personal information.

LinkedIn identified Dr. Landy as a Canadian Internist and Critical Care Medicine Specialist, having completed his M.D. at the University of Western Ontario, his internal medicine residency at the University of Alberta, and his critical care fellowship at the University of Toronto. In 2012, Joshua was invited to become a visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he researched online and multimedia-oriented approaches to health education. In 2013, Joshua co-founded a mobile health startup called Figure 1, a free-access repository of medical images available to the medical community.

Figure 1 helps doctors communicate with other medical professionals who have certain specialties. Doctors create their own Figure 1 profile, detail personal information such as specialties, areas of interest, the institution they’re associated with, and their location.

Landy claims, “There are around 100,000 medical professionals and almost 15% of U.S. medical students, currently using Figure 1. The app gets around 500,000-700,000 image views a day and has about 80 million image views total.”

I’m happy doctors can now easily exchange images. I just hope more and more take advantage of it.

Business Insider, a news site, recently posted a more in-depth story about Figure 1. Enjoy it.