Figure 1 is a

Toronto, Ontario Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

-based online social networking service for healthcare professionals to post and comment on medical images. Figure 1 was founded in Toronto by Dr. Joshua Landy, Richard Penner and Gregory Levey. The platform launched in North America in May 2013 and is now available in more than 100 countries. The privately held company reports more than 1 million healthcare professionals use its app and website.

Funding

In 2013, Figure 1 launched with $2 million (CDN) in seed money, with Rho Canada Ventures and Version One Ventures led the investment. In 2015, the company added $5 million (USD) to its Series A financing round, which was led by

Union Square Ventures Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, ...

, an early investor in

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

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, Etsy, and Kickstarter. This brings the total round to $9 million (USD).

Reception

Figure 1's content has been characterized as "gruesome". The app's founder said the "very colorful images" are what medics see every day. "It's a transparent view into a world you rarely get to see," he told the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

. When the company launched in Europe in 2014, privacy concerns were raised over the sharing of personal medical information. The app has a built-in consent form which every patient signs via a smartphone, as well as tools make it easy to anonymize an image. Before the company launched in 2013, it claimed that 13 percent of medical professionals were already using their smartphones to share images with one another via email or text message. Figure 1 documented the spread of MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) in May, 2014. During the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, Figure 1 created a special feed to help medical professionals in Ukraine with its archives of cases on gunshot wounds and broken limbs.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Health care software Health care companies of Canada

Funding

Reception

See also

References

External links