Ask Dr. Figo.org

Ask Dr. Figo (ADF) is a multilingual, geo-fenced, anonymous health platform designed to give users in legally restrictive countries safe access to sexual and reproductive health advice. The platform balances legal compliance, privacy, and accessibility while connecting users with trained doctors around the world.

Ask Dr. Figo

APIProduct ManagementProject ManagementReact/Vue

Challenge

Localized, Trustworthy Responses Are Hard to Find

Most health apps fail to account for language nuance, legal variance, or cultural context. ADF needed a way to tailor both content and doctor access by country.

Health Education Is Criminalized

In many regions, asking questions about LGBTQ+ health or reproductive rights can result in legal or physical danger. Traditional Q&A platforms don't provide the safety features required in these contexts.

Result

ADF supports anonymous medical questions across multiple countries, languages, and legal contexts, while offering real-time moderation and doctor dashboards. Doctors are motivated by gamified tiers and users feel protected by the site’s intentional design.

<24h

Reduced to under 24 hours after doctor engagement gamification.

System deployed with support for 8+ countries, each with localized content, flags, and admin controls.

Process

Building for regions with legal risk meant privacy, cultural context, and performance were not optional—they were central. Each sprint balanced operational flexibility with maximum safety, and features were gated by strict legal and ethical review.

Rapid Prototyping with Safety Constraints

Scoped geolocation, content locking, and doctor access control. Developed Quick Exit MVP early to de-risk launch.

Industry Standard Technologies

We needed something that was stable, yet performant. We settled on industry standard technology that can easily be maintained and scaled on AWS (Amazon Web Services). We split the project into an API, Administrator interface, Doctor portal and Public website. Using laravel and Vue, Ask Dr. Figo can sleep at night knowing that we have a highly customizable and performant platform.

Anonymous Access

All visitors to the public website can rest assured that their information is not stored with us. All questions are strictly confidential and only available to you using your very own special code.

Translatable

We enabled and support the customization and translation of almost every piece of text on the website no matter the country. The platform is ready to serve any country in the world.

Solution

ADF was built from the ground up to prioritize safety and geolocation. Public users can ask anonymous questions, view content only relevant to their country, and instantly leave the site with a Quick Exit feature. Doctors are onboarded with custom area-of-expertise tagging, and admins can assign or suggest questions based on match scores. All content and activity is geofenced, audited, and localized.

Our Insight

Most tech projects don’t start with the assumption that users could be arrested for visiting the site. ADF forced us to rethink everything—from login patterns to what should even be visible on screen. Every feature had to be discreet, performant, and protective.