PatientsLikeMe.com - Patients helping Patients

It’s been repeatedly stressed by those who take a close look to the problems of healthcare, that the mother of all evils in miscommunication, which takes different forms and faces: sometimes it’s doctors who don’t have enough time to chat with their patients, sometimes it’s that highly specialized researchers don’t know what colleagues are up to and so they lose time trying to figure out things that’s already been set, partly it’s the mammoth-like paperwork: the list is never-ending. The only sure thing is that it’s patients the ones who are suffering the illnesses and are not being relieved of their sufferings, and so the internet has come up with a solution for all these woes: Social Networking. PatientsLikeMe.com is a platform for people (and their families and caretakers) to join in order to keep track of the symptoms, feelings, treatments, and general evolution of the illness in question. Each patient gets several charts where to map if symptoms have gotten better or worse, how their height and weight has varied, and what mix of drugs and dosages have been taking at each step of the way. All this is done with the hope that people will share their experiences and relative knowledge of their conditions, with people that are going through the same things as you are.

“In 1998, a young carpenter named Stephen Heywood was diagnosed with ALS. The Heywood family began taking charge of Stephen's care, searching the world over for ideas that would extend his life and improve the way he lived. This set in motion a series of events that have led to PatientsLikeMe, a new system of medicine by patients for patients. We're here to give patients the power to control their disease and to share what they learn with others. We're here to help you”.

Taking a look at this site can be very moving: lots of people struggling to get over life-shattering conditions, and still having time to help and support other people in their same predicament is just incredible. The greatest bit of all is that the information is at times very scientific and sophisticated, but at times patients just give the simplest tips to their fellow patients. Also great about the site is that it devotes special sections to three specially hard diseases, like Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's Disease and Parkinson's Disease.

There is a big wake of the Health 2.0 industry, and although there doesn’t seem to be any direct competitor of PatientsLikeMe.com, it would seem sensible for this company to establish some links or an extended network where all the information sources can be accessed by entering one of the several platforms. After all, the problem with healthcare in real life is not being able to share information adequately. If this mistake is reproduced in web 2.0, we’ll only have twice as much problems.