The Rounds, the social network for Canadian doctors, on Wednesday launched The Clerks, a parallel community for the country’s medical students.

With 13,000 active members, The Rounds has established itself in just four years as the main online community for Canadian doctors, a place where they can find information to help patients. Now the Bedford-based company is expanding with the introduction of a similar product for med students.

“For us, it was the natural evolution of the product that we developed for physicians,” The Rounds CEO Blair Ryan said in an interview. “We figured, if we can get this built for Canadian doctors, we want to get it in the hands of a range of health practitioners, so this is the natural progression.”

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Ryan and his co-founders started The Rounds with the goal of allowing Canadian doctors to communicate in a secure environment so they could discuss medical issues. Of the utmost importance was the ability to ask each other for advice on diagnosis and treatment.

The plan was always to expand the service to other health-care professionals, and the team settled on medical students as the first group.

“Medical students are a unique bunch,” Ryan said. “They want the support from one another, and advice on things like whether to take a certain class and how to get through the class.”

He added that people can often find the best peer support outside their own institution.

The team began to soft-launch at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and within days one-quarter of the school’s students were on the site. The Clerks is already being offered to students at seven of Canada’s 17 medical schools, and about 13 per cent of students at these seven schools have signed up.

Ryan said the medical students’ discussion is somewhat different than that of the seasoned physicians, especially about medical technology. Whereas the older group is a bit more discerning when considering new technology, the younger group is wowed by the potential of what innovation can mean in the delivery of health care.

The medical students are also looking for mentorship opportunities, especially from established doctors, so The Rounds is looking at the possibility of a mentorship program that would link the two groups.

Meanwhile, the company is continuing to grow. The Rounds gains revenue by allowing corporate partners limited access to its network, and Ryan said the revenues are now beginning to grow. The Rounds now employs 12 people and is raising more capital, with a target of $1.5 million.

The next phase of expansion will likely be a network for Canadian acupuncturists, to be launched this autumn.

Ryan said the company so far has concentrated on the Canadian market because each country’s health-care system has its own unique properties, so it’s best for medical practitioners to communicate with people in their own system. But he added the company could launch in another jurisdiction within 12 months. He declined to name the first country targeted for expansion.