Doximity head: Mission to connect physicians
BOSTON--Jeff Tangney, founder and CEO of Doximity, has a mission to help physicians connect. Tangney spoke during the Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit.
Doximity is designed to be a professional network for physicians. With 15 billion faxes sent within the U.S. healthcare system annually, that’s a lot of time and effort that could be saved. “We want to make that day-to-day process of being a physician more efficient.”
Although many digital health companies are afraid to have physicians as clients, Tangney said, “physicians will adopt technology, particularly if it’s mobile.”
One ongoing challenge, he said, is secure messaging. “It’s not that difficult to encrypt messages but it is difficult to confirm that the person on the other end is who they say they are.”
More than one-third of U.S. physicians are Doximity members, “so connectivity keeps getting stronger and stronger.” Doximity has about four times as many doctors as are on LinkedIn, Tangney said. The market for recruiting physicians is much bigger than he thought, he added. “There is no solution on the market like what we’re offering.” The current process typically involves job postings on association websites which Tangney said is pretty inefficient and is sometimes comical. He cited a post for a job in West Virginia that said it was a short drive from the beach.
Tangney said his company is growing at a rapid pace. “LinkedIn in its third year did $1.2 million in revenue. We’re doing much better than that.”
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.