• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, May 1, 2014

Doximity, a professional social network for doctors and other medical professionals, has raised another $54 million from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, T. Rowe Price Associates, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Emergence Capital Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and InterWest Partners, the company announced this week. With previous rounds that brings the company’s total funding to date to $81.8 million.

Doximity founder and CEO Jeff Tangney says that the company will use the new funds to expand internationally and also plans on opening the network to new areas of the medical profession, including nurses. Finally it will also develop new products to help simplify some of the burdensome requirements of the medical profession, like verifying and displaying credentials. 

The plan to include nurses is especially noteworthy, as nursing represents a huge and potentially very lucrative market for a professional social network. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics there are currently 2.71 million registered nurses working in the U.S., and the number will increase 19% to 3.24 million by 2022. Meanwhile there are currently around 750,000 physicians and surgeons in the U.S., and that number will increase by around 75,000, or 10%, by 2022.

In January of this year Doximity announced that it had reached 250,000 members, or roughly 35% of all doctors in the U.S. (that’s up from 30,000 users towards the end of 2011), with members sending 10,000 messages to other members every day. The latest figures show it has around 300,000 members, or 40% of the total physician population.

Doximity launched in 2011 with the mission of enabling doctors to communicate with each other online in full compliance with HIPAA rules. Among other things, Doximity members can tap the expertise of other docs to learn more about conditions and treatments as well as job opportunities, conferences, and the like. Users can search Doximity members by clinical interests, hospital affiliations, specialties, languages spoken, insurance accepted, and PubMed citations.

The company has also added a continuing education module, offering up to 20 hours of free coursework, tests, and quizzes in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic.