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PatientsLikeMe

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In addition to providing a space for conversation and support, as many other online communities do, PatientsLikeMe also collects and shares data on symptoms and treatments. The end result is a dynamic database supporting patient management of their own care.

As Thomas Goetz notes in his March 23, 2008 New York Times Magazine article on PatientsLikeMe...

"The members of PatientsLikeMe don't just share their experiences anecdotally; they quantify them, breaking down their symptoms and treatments into hard data. They note what hurts, where and for how long. They list their drugs and dosages and score how well they alleviate their symptoms. All this gets compiled over time, aggregated and crunched into tidy bar graphs and progress curves by the software behind the site. And it's all open for comparison and analysis. By telling so much, the members of PatientsLikeMe are creating a rich database of disease treatment and patient experience...

PatientsLikeMe ... allows patients to manage their disease with a sophistication and precision that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago... They 7000 members of PatientsLikeMe ... [are] not typical patients, in the sense of waiting for advice from a doctor. They are, rather, co-practitioners treating their conditions and guiding their care, with possibly profound implications..."

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