“Today is a day of massive celebration of what health innovators have done,” said US Department of Health & Human Services’ Chief Technology Officer Todd Park this morning as he welcomed everyone to the 2nd Annual Health Data Initiative Forum (or “Health Data-Palooza,” as Park called it). The goal? To create “a self-propelled, open ‘ecosystem of innovation’ using data to improve health,” he said.

Naturally, the open sharing of health data to help patients is something we’re very passionate about at PatientsLikeMe. In fact, it’s our mission. That’s why my brother and fellow co-founder Jamie got up on stage at today’s event to show just how PatientsLikeMe can do that. As an invited speaker, he unveiled our new Clinical Trials feature, which provides customized, real-time listings from ClinicalTrials.gov to help patients find clinical trials that are right for them as well as help companies find patients who are right for their clinical trial.

In today’s press release about this new “matching” feature, Jamie says, “It’s difficult for patients to find trials and for investigators to find patients. We can help solve both of those problems by telling each of our 100,000+ patients what trials they’re eligible for and by showing each trial sponsor how many patients they can reach.”

Below is an infographic that shows the number of clinical trials in one selected region that are now listed on PatientsLikeMe and the many patients nearby who are eligible to take part in these research efforts. The goal, as we see it, is making the clinical trial matching process faster, easier and more accessible.

This entry was posted on June 9, 2011 at 11:57 am and is filed under Openness. Tagged: clinical trial matching, clinical trials, Health Data Initiative Forum, jamie heywood, Us Department of Health & Human Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.