IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
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New learning tool for healthcare professionals
Mon, 24th Feb 2014
FYI, this story is more than a year old

New Zealand healthcare professionals now have access to thousands of medical images following the local launch of the Figure 1 app last week.

Figure 1 is a photo sharing app that challenges the traditional medical image library by providing an instant, crowdsourced alternative.

With the swipe of a finger, users take photos, remove identifying patient information, and can make use of an in-app patient consent form that has been customised for New Zealand.

Within minutes of an image being posted, healthcare professionals around the world are discussing it.

Figure 1 is part of the game-changing ‘mobile health’ movement that’s breaking down barriers to information sharing in healthcare. “Medicine is a visual field and there’s so much to be learned from medical images,” says concept developer Dr. Joshua Landy, a Canadian Critical Care Medicine Specialist.

“I wanted to develop a privacy conscious way for healthcare professionals to view, share, and talk about a wide variety of medical findings”.

Launched in North America in May last year, Figure 1 quickly reached the top spot in the medical category on both the Canadian and US App Store, and has since launched in the UK, Ireland and Australia.

It recently had its 30 millionth image view. Available free on the New Zealand App Store, Figure 1 is currently available on iPhone, expanding to web and Android in the coming weeks.