When Doximity launched in 2010, it became known as the “LinkedIn for doctors” – offering a digital platform for medical professionals, later adding video services in 2020.
The healthcare social network has now grown to more than 1.8 million members – including 80% of all U.S. doctors and 90% of graduating medical students – and just went public, raising $600 million in its IPO. To date, it’s raised $81.8 million in private funding from investors.
The company, which specializes in providing digital tools to connect doctors with colleagues and patients, has recently poured most of its efforts into telehealth – an area that saw remarkable growth during the pandemic, said cofounder Dr. Nate Gross.
“We’re going to continue to invest substantially in telehealth, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re excited about going public – to have the growth and opportunity to be able to do that,” Gross explained.
In light of the recent IPO, MM+M spoke with Gross about Doximity’s growth during the pandemic and on…
…designing technology with the “doctor in mind”: We help doctors collaborate with their colleagues, stay up to date with the latest medical news and research, manage their careers and conduct telehealth visits with their patients. The thing they have in common is we’re physician-first in everything we build. Compare that to a lot of healthcare software out there, where it’s pretty obvious it’s designed for the billing department.
We believe that technology should be designed for doctors to help them be more productive and successful in their day-to-day job of doctoring. Because of that I think we’ve seen tremendous adoption and a strong network effect here on the platform and that has led to all of the opportunities and where we are today.
…seeing a boost in telehealth usage: We did see a significant increase in our usage over the pandemic. We had around 100,000 clinicians before the pandemic using our telehealth suite in aggregate, and just in the last quarter, we had over 300,000 clinicians use our telehealth tools.
…transcending health system fragmentation: We’ve all probably had a loved one who’s had difficulty navigating the U.S. healthcare system and finding that right expert for their needs, and they end up at the wrong specialist and the wrong surgeon two or three times. With Doximity, you can find exactly who you’re looking for – you can find a neurosurgeon who specializes in glioblastoma, or a cardiologist who specializes in percutaneous aortic valve replacement and speaks Spanish. Those really precise referrals help the patient get to exactly who they need.
…using data science to keep doctors up to date on new research: There are 30,000 new medical research articles published every week. That’s great for scientific progress, but that’s pretty overwhelming for doctors to keep up with it all. Our newsfeeds use data science to scan those articles and to match the news and research to each doctor’s clinical interest. We believe if we can separate signal from noise here, then doctors can keep abreast of what they need to know to stay up to date and be the best at their niche of medicine, and that helps patients ensure they’re always getting the highest standard of care.
…the company’s role in healthcare marketing: We also help doctors stay up to date on the latest treatments – we work with hospitals, health systems and pharmaceutical manufacturers to get the right content, services, peer connections, medical professionals at the right time through a variety of modules. We work with our partners to co-author that content, so the goal is to make that content useful, relevant to each doctor, interesting, and not necessarily feel like sponsored content, but something that is very helpful to the doctors in this experience to be able to stay up to date on what new procedure a hospital might be doing.
…on the IPO and next steps: We are excited to share that over 10,000 physicians participated in the IPO buying shares, and that’s tremendously important to us to be able to share our success with our physician members. In general, this IPO is an exciting opportunity – it allows us to continue to invest in serving doctors, continue to invest in building out new things to help clients that we work with, and it really increases our financial flexibility. Our proceeds will mainly be used for working capital to keep funding our growth and invest in some exciting new areas. We think there’s just a lot of things we can continue to do to improve the way doctors are able to get their day-to-day jobs done. If we do that, we’re simultaneously serving the patients which includes all of our loved ones.
