DocSpot

Inspiration

Imagine you’re a physician whose patient needs a specialist. Finding the right person can be difficult, especially when many physicians are digitally dark or hard to reach through the usual industry channels.

We wanted to hear directly from an HCP, so we reached out to Dr. Justin Strickland, the owner of a pharmaceutical practice here in Atlanta. He told us, “Even some of our local physicians who we have known and worked with for years have become increasingly difficult to reach after their practices were acquired.”

Today, 82% of U.S. physicians work for hospitals or corporate entities (PAI/Avalere). And in rural areas, finding a doctor can be even harder, as urban areas have nearly three times as many physicians per 100,000 people (AAMC, 2022).

To bridge this gap, we looked at how physicians learn about new critical clinical tools and found that professional relationships play an important role. In a survey, 76.4% of physicians named other physicians among their most trusted sources of health information (Kruger et al., 2012).

That’s where DocSpot comes in. Built on Impiricus' network of over 1 million opted-in healthcare professionals, DocSpot maps national physician connections so doctors can refer patients, ask clinical questions, and surface telehealth or trial opportunities.

What it does

DocSpot connects physicians based on specialty, experience, and clinical needs, creating a network that introduces more HCPs to Impiricus’ services. An HCP can find a specialist for a referral, explore telehealth and clinical trial options, or find a colleague to answer a clinical question. Drawing from a comprehensive database of physicians and specialists across the US, DocSpot recommends relevant physicians, including those who have not joined Impiricus.

For referrals, DocSpot ranks specialists by factors such as specialty, distance, and their relationship to the sender. It then drafts an editable electronic fax (e-fax) with limited patient information. The HCP reviews the recipient, draft, and privacy check before approving it, then tracks the request and response in one place through the platform.

A physician outside Impiricus can respond without joining. After that first useful interaction, they can choose to connect with the sender on Impiricus and discover its services through a professional relationship.

How we built it

Frontend: HTML, CSS, and plain JavaScript power the workflow. SVG draws the network map and groups physicians by specialty, while client-side code generates QR codes for fax previews.

Backend and AI: Python FastAPI and Pydantic validate requests. The backend sends limited, structured details to OpenAI’s gpt-4.1-mini model to draft faxes and assist with privacy review.

Physician data: We cleaned NPI Registry records in a Jupyter notebook and mapped taxonomy descriptions to DocSpot’s specialties. The demo uses 253 clinician records for sample recommendations.

Consent and email: After a specialist accepts, the referring physician reviews a consent form. FastAPI serves the signing page, and the Resend Email API sends the patient a link. The patient confirms their date of birth and signs before DocSpot shares further details.

Challenges we ran into

Our first visual network map consisted of singular, unrelated nodes, and eventually became difficult to read as we added physicians and their connections. To address this challenge, we separated clinicians into specialty groups, made the nodes easier to distinguish, and added a list view. NPI records also used different descriptions for similar specialties, so we had to clean and map those labels before using the records in recommendations.

Referrals also required careful handling of patient information. The sending physician reviews the request before it goes out. If the receiving physician accepts, the patient signs a consent form before DocSpot shares any further patient details.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

This was everyone on our team’s first hackathon, so we’re proud we turned a physician’s experience into a working prototype under a tight deadline. We're also proud of the network map, which gives HCPs a visual way to see where care is available, and most importantly, helps improve patient care.

What we learned

Building a healthcare product taught us how much goes into a physician’s decision to contact a colleague. They need to find the right person, protect the patient’s privacy, and review what they send. Because those decisions can affect a real patient’s care, we learned to look at each step from the physician’s perspective and make DocSpot useful in their day-to-day work.

What’s next for DocSpot

We hope to explore partnerships with Careset, HealthVerity, or Symphony Health, and GaHIN to improve our physician and relationship data. We also want to integrate a secure e-fax service so HCPs can send and track real requests. We would start with a pilot in one rural Georgia county, learn how local HCPs find specialists and respond to referrals, adjust DocSpot based on their feedback, and then expand to other communities.