Thing 18: Communicating Through Photographs

As I already have Flickr and Instagram accounts I thought I'd explore a slightly different photo based app for this weeks task which I think may be of particular interest for librarians working within health care. 'Figure 1' https://figure1.com/  is a photo sharing app for members of the health community. Medical professionals can upload images of diseases or injuries (whilst of course ensuring the anonymity of their patients). The app was created with the idea that sharing images of what perplexes one doctor with other doctors or health professionals around the world can help to point them in the right direction- effectively crowd sourcing diagnosis.

The app very much has the look and feel of Instagram and has often been labelled as 'the Instagram for doctors'. However, the uploading of images isn't as straight forward as Instagram. The uploader is required to follow strict guidelines on what is and isn't permitted. The patients face or any identifiable marks cannot be in view. Once uploaded the photo is placed in a queue for it to be manually reviewed.

I can see this app becoming particularly popular with medical students the adoption of social media and the new smartphone and tablet tools that are increasingly being used in hospitals for medical education.