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Urologist Richard Casey of Oakville, Ont., left.

When Oakville, Ont., urologist Richard Casey has a perplexing case, he reaches for the newest tool in his medical kit - an iPhone app that allows immediate consultation with fellow urologists.

"I can broadcast on the app, 'Hey guys, what do I do with this kidney stone in a diabetic woman?' I get some advice from my friends and it's all confidential," Dr. Casey, who helped devise the application, said in an interview.

MDapps.ca, launched last month for use on hand-held devices such as BlackBerrys and iPhones, allows for 24/7 communication between medical colleagues, and access to the latest research on a "closed forum" private network developed by Mobile Fringe, a Toronto-based mobile marketing agency.

The applications, free to medical practitioners, are supported by fees from pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers who pay to rent "storefront" space on the site, Dr. Casey said. Advertisers have no direct contact with the doctors and no access to their discussions, he stressed.

Urologists were the first Canadian medical specialists to go online with MDapps.ca, which is gradually being rolled out to other practice areas. One subscriber is the Canadian Journal of Urology, which can put landmark articles on new research and medical advances on the site right away, Dr. Casey said.

"It's sort of exploded into a general tool for us to share interesting papers that we read, journal articles, treatment advice. If one guy has found a particularly good way to do something, he can share it with his colleagues," Dr. Casey said. "Traditionally, that's done at medical meetings, but medical meetings are not as well attended as they used to be because they're very expensive."

As a result, "there's not been as much cross-pollination as there was 25 years ago when I started," he said.

Dr. Casey formed the idea of a social network for physicians after watching his four children - often so absorbed with Facebook he had to text them to come to dinner - and by observing his fellow physicians' addiction to their smart phones.

"About a year and a half ago, I put together a plan to try to set up a Facebook page for urologists, but it wasn't private enough. I didn't want something that anyone could hack into … and I wanted something that we could use when we were on the phone, in between cases, waiting at the train station. Physicians have been pretty quick to adapt smart phones, most of us have iPhones or BlackBerrys."

There are similar online social networks for physicians in the United States, but they are not yet accessible through handheld devices, Dr. Casey said.

Mobile Fringe has built a high level of security into the application, he added. "It's password protected - we want to make sure the doctors are who they say they are. We have a medical monitor who monitors it every day. We look for trespassers. If someone is in there trying to sell snake oil, or looks like they are not who they say they are, we pull them off right away."

Although MDapps.ca is still in the startup stage, Dr. Casey - who also serves as an editor of the Canadian Journal of Urology and owns a research company that conducts clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry - said it has generated a lot of interest in the medical community, especially from practitioners in remote regions. The site is building up a medical library, and physicians who attend conferences are now starting to post information about the proceedings for the benefit of their colleagues.

There is also growing interest from pharmaceutical and equipment manufacturers, who have designated space on the site where they can post information about new products that have been vetted by federal health regulators.

The vendors hub serves as a shopping mall for physicians, "where we can read without any pressure from sales representatives in our offices," Dr. Casey said. "And that storefront rent supports the running of our applications."

The eventual benefit to manufacturers will be a broader reach, as more physicians adopt and use the application, which is now expanding beyond the 700-strong community of urologists in Canada.

"I can see, going forward, what the potential revenue sources will be when we have 20,000 doctors [using the application] The pharmaceutical industry will say it's a better way, instead of going to their offices and waiting for two hours to see a doctor for five minutes."

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