You ever get disgusted when someone posts a picture of their recent injury on social media? A bloody photo of someone’s fractured arm with bright white bone showing through their skin, hashtagged #SOCOOL. This still won’t stop your friends from robbing you of your appetite when you check your phone, but now doctors have their own unique way to document their patients’ injuries with a new smartphone app.

Called Figure 1, the app allows doctors and medical professionals to photograph the injuries they are working on and share them with others in the medical community.

Joshua Landy, co-founder of the app, explained his reasoning for helping create Figure 1. “I developed Figure 1 because I wanted a safe way to share medical images with the medical community, while protect patients’ privacy.”

Technically, anyone can use Figure 1 and view the images of the injuries. However, Figure 1 includes several privacy features to prevent the average person from going on and viewing whatever kind of things they want. In order to prove you’re a degree-certified MD, Figure 1 offers a way to get a Verified MD checkmark on your profile.

Patient consent is also an issue for this app, but the forward-thinking creators of Figure 1 have already thought of a solution. “Patients or their representatives can use their finger to sign the screen on your phone, and a complete consent form will be e-mailed to you.” Of course, the doctor could simply take a picture of your injury without telling you, but hopefully these types of actions are kept to a minimum.

Figure 1 comes with all the features you’d expect in a modern-day phone application. You can use hashtags to describe the injury when you upload, add comments and labels onto specific portions of pictures to further describe the injury, and control who can view the images you upload. The app even comes with a face detector that blocks you from uploading any image that contains a person’s face so the patient’s identity is protected.

Currently the app is only available to iPhone users, but Figure 1 plans to have the device available to Android users soon. The app is free to download and available in North America.

I’m not sure how I feel about doctors taking pictures of my injuries, but as long as they use the provided consent forms and the patient’s identity is protected, I don’t see the issue. Figure 1 seems like a great sharing tool for medical professionals. Let’s just hope the community remains professional and quality content is shared.