9 Doctor Social Networking Sites Every Physician Should Know About

You’re probably already on most major social networks but if you’re not also utilizing physician-oriented social networking sites, you’re missing out.

Doctor-focused social networking sites offer connection, crowd-sourcing, and education opportunities.

We’ve rounded up 10 sites—presented in alphabetical order—that can aid your professional development, in addition to increasing your networking opportunities.

General connection sites

These are the real must-haves. These sites boast an impressive number of physician users, and offer doctors more than enough utility to justify signing up and playing around.

1. Sermo

Users:~800,00

Target demographic:

“Verified and credentialized” physicians worldwide, including physicians from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Argentina, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, France, Finland, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and Israel.

Sermo is the largest biggest, most successful social network for doctors. The site focuses on connecting doctors to facilitate collaboration, and touts itself as a “virtual doctors' lounge.”

The goal is medical crowdsourcing—, think a Quora for doctors. You can ask real-life medical questions and get answers from hundreds of your peers. Sermo is physician-only, and you can ask questions anonymously.

Another cool thing about Sermo is that member physicians earn more than $16 million every year in honoraria for weighing in on new and current drugs, techniques, and medical devices for market research firms.

2. Doximity

Users: 500,000

Target demographic: U.S. healthcare professionals

Doximity is a newer kid on the block, aimed at connecting you to doctors you already know — colleagues, classmates, and co-residents on a HIPAA-secure platform.

The company claims that 70% of U.S. physicians are on Doximity, and that 90% of fourth-year med students are now members.

You can upload your CV and list your clinical interests, education, board certifications, and publications on your profile. Doximity also offers data on compensation trends in your specialty and geographic area, a job board, and tools to earn and track your CME credits. It includes a personalized medical news and research feed, and its collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center allows physicians to earn Category 1 credits by reading medical journals.

Doximity also offers a phone dialer and a HIPAA-secure digital fax and messaging service so physicians can call or fax patients from their personal cell phones while the patient sees the doctor's office number on their caller ID.

3. DailyRounds

Users: ~30,000

Target demographic: International physicians

TechCrunch calls DailyRounds “a service for doctors that combines elements of a social network and a medical journal.” In September 2016 venture capital firm Accel handed an undisclosed sum to the service, with help from Beenos, Powerhouse Ventures, and Aksua Holdings.

Two years ago Dr. Deepu Sebin was inspired by the way developers used Stack Overflow to teach their peers across different organizations by detailing how they accomplished their goals. Doctors can use DailyRounds to exchange wisdom, upload and view medical case files, and access a drug database. You can also chitchat and network on the desktop or through iOS, and Android apps.

4. QuantiaMD

Users: 200,000

Target demographic: U.S. physicians

Less a social network, and more a learning and collaboration platform, QuantiaMD is evocative of a combination of Quora and Lynda.com for doctors. It helps physicians stay ahead by interacting with and learning from experts and peers.

5. Among Doctors

Users: ~2,500

Target demographic: U.S. and international physicians

Like Doximity and Sermo, Among Doctors is a social network for doctors with discussion boards and international job postings. You can also use it to create and collaborate with private groups of trusted experts. Another standout feature is that the platform doesn't allow pharmacists or drug reps to join, limiting access to verified physicians who must use their real names.

Specific utility sites

These are the sites you should join if you need the specific utility they offer.

6. Figure1

Users: ~500,000

Target demographic: Healthcare professionals and students in more than 100 countries

Need feedback from other doctors on what you’re seeing? With Figure1, you can share images of patient ailments to get other physicians’ opinions, and access others’ images to educate yourself on rare illnesses.

Scrolling through the images can help you recognize rare conditions in your patients. If you live in an isolated locale, Figure1 can be a great source of connection to other physicians.

Figure1 protects patient privacy by removing identifying information from the images —such as faces and tattoos— automatically, as well as having humans review every image before it appears on the app.

7. Incision Academy

Users: ~500

Incision Academy is much more of a MOOC platform than a social network. The social part of the platform is its goal is to help surgeons share their techniques with other surgeons across the world. The promotional video describes Incision Academy as “the next step towards a universal surgical language,” citing its first value sharing. “Sharing surgical skills will improve the quality of surgical care.”

Niche sites

8. Student Doctors Network 

Founded in 1999 by medical students and residents, the Student Doctor Network is a non-profit educational website with a single mission: help students become doctors.

9. MomMD 

Primarily a forum and job board for female physicians, on MomMD you can compare salary data ask questions of other doctors.

10. Doctor’s Choice Placement Services 

This site is like Monster.com for physicians. You can search for jobs by geography and specialty, as well as upload your CV. Clients include hospitals and health systems, government facilities, medical groups and private practices.