Doximity, a new health IT company from the founders of Epocrates, secured a $10.8 million Series A venture capital investment from Emergence Capital Partners and InterWest Partners, funding further development of its secure physician network, which already counts 7,000 doctors as users of the free mobile app.
Doximity describes itself as a medical communications platform that uses social networking technologies to enable doctors to communicate securely with one another. It's also designed to be used via smartphones. Unlike other physician social networking sites, Doximity is real-time and not anonymous. One of its core offerings is to help physicians find each other. An example of the type of search a Doximity user might make through the platform: "Psychiatrist in Tampa who speaks Spanish."
Doximity also enables physicians to send text messages and MMS to each other via a secure network, according to the company. On this front Doximity is competing with doctors' current primary mode of communication: the fax machine.
Doximity aims to help docs find the right medical expert for a patient, coordinate care with other healthcare professionals, and build their own medical practices. Eventually Doxmity hopes to become "the gold standard" national directory of physicians, health professionals, hospitals, nursing homes, imaging groups and labs.
Doximity's founder and CEO is Jeff Tangney, who was formerly President and COO of Epocrates. Doximity’s founding team also includes: Dr. Elise Singer, Dr. Marc Lawrence, Shari Buck, Mark Pagura, and Al Fontes. Dr. Richard Fiedotin and Dr. Tom Lee, who co-founded Epocrates with Tangney, are advisors and contributors to Doximity, according to the company.
If Doximity's promises of secure communication between doctors via smartphones are real, then the question is: Are doctors ready? Sure, three out of four doctors in the US have smartphones today, according to the oft-quoted figure, but are they willing to communicate in real-time, onymously? (That's the awkward opposite of anonymously, apparently.)
Tangney and his team now have $10.8 million to find out.
