An app is born to guarantee confidential communication between doctors

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

DICUS is a free application for doctors that offers users to be part of a community, position themselves as specialists, exchange information confidentially and access studies and advances in the pharmaceutical industry. In this environment, users of the application can ask another doctor for help in diagnosing a case or share information about patients in strict confidence, as required by the Law on data protection.

 It is not necessary for doctors to know each other personally. Members of the DICUS community can get in touch based on their professional interests, details the creator of the application. It is an immediate and comfortable work platform, like an instant messaging app. It's a mix between WhatsApp and LinkedIn for doctors.

DICUS is a project led by Lorena Jané, a student of the UOC university master's degree. The application has already completed a pilot phase with a community of neurosurgeons and is currently in the commercial phase with the aim of contacting professional and medical associations that want to use it.

To be part of the application, doctors register for free with their data and DICUS validates that it is a medical professional. Users of this first pilot test point out precisely that it is much easier to locate specialists than in a generic social network, such as LinkedIn, since they can search by specialty and by medical center. "Doctors make little use of LinkedIn to identify experts and exchange information, and sometimes they have to turn to other colleagues for messaging networks like WhatsApp, which are not intended for professional use," says Jané. In addition to being a professional and exclusive network for doctors, its first users have valued the legal security offered by DICUS to share patient data.

"I know first-hand the concerns of doctors because I live in my family and studying law I realized that it was necessary to facilitate the possibility of communicating and at the same time comply with the protection of patient data," says Jané.

The business model is inspired by the reality of younger doctors: no time to receive visits but accustomed to using new technologies. The application, free for doctors, includes studies and information from pharmaceutical companies, which pay a fee to access the DICUS community. «In 2017, the pharmaceutical companies spent 143 million euros on advertising in Spain and 181 million euros on payments to doctors, both directly - paying for services - and indirectly - paying for congress or travel tickets. We know that not all doctors have the opportunity to attend congresses, but instead they want to have the opportunity to receive information about new advances and products, ”says Jané. The application will offer you these studies and information on events grouped by specialty.

The potential of the application is high: in the whole of the Spanish State there are 253,000 registered doctors, 75% of whom are under 55 years of age. In a second phase, the promoter of the Latin American brand project as a potential market with one million professionals, many of whom have been trained in Spain. "In this case, the application will allow them to maintain contact with their mentors," adds Jané.

Jané presented the application in the latest edition of SpinUOC, a forum promoted by the UOC in support of entrepreneurship in the educational community. "Presenting the project to other entrepreneurs who are at the same time that I was a great opportunity and a good learning for contact with future investors," says Jané.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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