What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our ongoing blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features PatientsLikeMe employees from different departments.  Today we’d like to introduce you to David Blaser, PharmD, a registered pharmacist who decided to trade his white lab coat for the more casual dress of the startup world in early 2011.  Find out what drew him to PatientsLikeMe, how his pharmacy background factors into his work and more.

1.  What led you to join PatientsLikeMe?

My journey had a few twists and turns, but now that I’m here, I can’t imagine working anywhere else.  I started studying pharmacy at Northeastern in 2003. Toward the end of my time there, I started to consider the career paths I could take and didn’t find any of the traditional ones particularly compelling. Maybe it was part of being young and naïve, but I continually was disappointed and perplexed by our healthcare system in the US. I felt like there had to be a better way.

Then I took a great class called Pharmacoeconomics and Health Outcomes. During this class, you take a medical question (e.g., Should I take drug A or drug B for this problem?) and develop computer models that take into account how it would affect the overall health of the population. It made perfect sense to me, and I didn’t understand why this wasn’t done in our system.

Fascinated with this area of medicine, I started a two-year research fellowship at UMass Medical School to learn more about it. During this time, I worked on lots of models examining conditions from insomnia to hepatitis C. Toward the end, I was looking at career opportunities in this area and got an alert about a posting on PatientsLikeMe. I was amazed how the system PatientsLikeMe had put together was even better than the models I was working on and how it could revolutionize our healthcare system. So I immediately contacted Paul Wicks, the head of R&D at PatientsLikeMe, and was able to set up an internship to work a few days a month on various projects. This eventually turned into a position on the Health Data Integrity Team with Christine Caligtan, Sally Okun and Shivani Bhargava.

On a more personal note, during this time my family and I went through the death of my brother due to substance abuse. This has had a deep impact on me and made me reflect on how can I help others avoid a similar fate. One of my long-term goals at PatientsLikeMe is to develop a better support community for other patients with substance abuse disorders.

2.  What’s surprised you the most about the health startup world?

The majority of my previous work experience was in pharmacies, which is one of the most heavily regulated professions. The amount of documentation, guidelines and laws you have to follow is staggering. When I started at PatientsLikeMe, I would find myself asking, where are our guidelines or what is the protocol?  I remember asking Co-Founder Jamie Heywood, and his response really changed my way of thinking.

He told me that no one else has ever tried to do what PatientsLikeMe is doing and there is no rule book. When you reflect on it, it is amazing to be part of the first company to try to accomplish our mission and develop a rule book for something that’s never been done.  Besides this, there is nothing better than having a job where you can have a beer in the office at the end of a stressful day and others join in with you.  (This is frowned upon in hospitals!)

3.  How does your doctoral and fellowship training inform your work?

While at Northeastern, I completed a doctor of pharmacy degree (PharmD). This gave me the knowledge needed to maintain our drug database and think about how medications should be added to our user profiles. There is still a lot to be done in this area, but I’m looking forward to improving it as we continue to develop our site.

While at UMass, I studied the different ways that ‘health’ can be measured. This seems like something that should be straightforward, but I found a whole new way of evaluating medicine and health. In theory, you give one group a drug and give another group a sugar pill and see who lives longer, but many patients don’t have the time for that. We need to get answers now, so how can we measure more intermediate outcomes to give us a clue about which medications work better? And what about medications that don’t make you live longer, but make your life better? It’s a difficult process that will never be perfect, but I think that the surveys and tools PatientsLikeMe has developed do an excellent job of measuring these things.

4.  What are the challenges of overseeing the wealth of drug information on the site?

People love sharing information! I recently talked with a member who entered information related to a hand injury they experienced while cutting some fruit, including every nerve and tendon that was injured and the different surgeries and operations to heal it. We love that people share such detailed information, but it can create some difficulty in designing profiles so that they are not overwhelming.

As for the drug information on the site, there are many ways that medications are formulated and taken that are difficult to show in the system. Medications can have different dosages, different formulations (e.g., creams, syrups, pills, injections), different schedules (e.g., take one daily, take one every six weeks, etc.), and they can come in a variety of combinations with other drugs. Not to mention the same medications may be available as a prescription drug, over-the-counter drug and supplement all at the same time. The medication databases that are available don’t always meet the needs of our users, but I do my best to put the right information and options in front of them.

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Interested in making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking for a Senior Visual Designer, Client Services Program Director, HEOR Research Scientist and more at the moment.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our monthly blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features PatientsLikeMe employees from different departments.  Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Caligtan, RN, MSN, a registered nurse who has served as our Health Data and Patient Safety Clinical Specialist since May 2011.  Find out what that involves, why she made the switch to the health startup world and much more in our interview.

1.  What’s it like to be a registered nurse at a health startup?

I could not be happier as a registered nurse at PatientsLikeMe. It’s the best of both worlds: I get to interact with patients online, and I am satisfying the informatics side of my interests by working the patients’ data and fostering their ability to track and maintain their health with online tools.

When I started working as a nurse I never thought my career path would lead me to a health startup. As I encountered different clinical settings and patient experiences, I knew that technology was the key to advancing healthcare.  From that point, I decided I wanted to work in the field of nursing informatics. The first step in that direction was when I was asked to join a multi-disciplinary team to help build and design an electronic health record (EHR) for a hospital in New York City.  Linking the patients and the healthcare team to the power of technology is extremely satisfying.

I first learned about PatientsLikeMe when I was in grad school.  I was taking a course called Consumers and Interactive Healthcare, and my professor and advisor Lena Sorenson shared with us some of the innovative health companies for consumers, and PatientsLikeMe was one of them! In fact, Lena encouraged me to apply to PatientsLikeMe since I was looking for a shift in my career.  It has turned out to be a perfect fit.

2.  What kind of projects are you working on right now?

We have been working on some improvements for our epilepsy community, making existing tools easier to use and investigating how to better connect doctors and patients. Then, on a daily basis, David Blaser, our Health Data and Drug Information Clinical Specialist, and I curate the data that our users submit to us. Any time there is a condition, treatment or symptom that our users cannot find in our database, we review it and add it to our growing database of patient-reported data. Our job is to ensure we maintain structure and organization with all of the data.

3.  You lead weekly yoga classes for PatientsLikeMe staff.  Tell us about that.

One of the definite highlights of my job! Every Wednesday I have the privilege of leading a small group of staff in a 90-minute Hatha/Vinyasa yoga class. I completed my teacher training during the summer of 2011 at South Boston Yoga. When I came back from training, there was a lot of interest and support in having me teach at work. It’s been a lot of fun and has helped me grow my practice in so many ways.

Every week we roll out our mats and practice yoga together. All of my office mates know that Wednesdays at 5pm in Siberia (our back office space) is yoga time.  To counter the frenetic energy in the office, I like to begin class with meditation and some grounding poses and then slowly turn up the heat with the more challenging poses. We practice together to honor the time and space that we create for ourselves so that we can be our best selves.

4.  What are your three favorite things about working at PatientsLikeMe?

I am in constant amazement of the dedication to creating a meaningful experience for our patients and clients. I like our office camaraderie and commitment to creating change within healthcare. And of course, I love our weekly Wednesday yoga days. We rock out, sweat and play, and that’s my ideal end to a work day.

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Interested in making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking to hire an Analytics Strategist / Data Scientist, Chief Technology Officer, Data Visualization Engineer / Chart Developer and more at the moment.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our monthly blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features PatientsLikeMe employees from different departments.  Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Darowski, a father of three who joined the technology team as a web developer exactly three years ago.  Find out why he had a crush on the company long before he came to work here and more in our interview.

1.  What led you to join PatientsLikeMe in 2009?

I had been a big fan of PatientsLikeMe since late 2006 when I originally met Co-Founders Ben Heywood and Jeff Cole. Over time, it became more and more clear to me that my next position would be with PatientsLikeMe. First the company hired Kate Brigham (who I had known for quite a while), then I met people like Cris Necochea and Rich Thornett. I knew it was a special place with special people.

What ultimately led me here in 2009 was the opportunity to do some things that were very important to me. I want to make PatientsLikeMe an incredible resource not just for patients living chronic conditions, but also for parent caregivers of children with developmental and chromosomal disorders. We’ve made some progress on that front but still have a lot of work to do.

2.  Give us a slice of life as a web developer.  What are you working on currently?

We just finished Wow Week, which is pretty much my favorite thing in the world. [Occurring every six weeks, Wow Week is a week of unstructured time in which the PatientsLikeMe technology team can work on and present their own ideas.]

I worked on some concepts for what PatientsLikeMe could look like if it was focused exclusively on parent caregivers. So, this involved some user research (not a ton, since it was only a concept and I only had a week), user interface design, and a lot of visual design. Since I also love to get in the code, I then worked with Michael Berkowitz to start building it out some of the features. My main focus there was on the home page, building a design that would work well whether you looked at it on a phone or a 24-inch monitor.

During more typical weeks, my time is spent building and improving site features. I’m a “front end” guy, which means I don’t really do any hardcore software engineering. Rather, I build the part that you actually see and interact with. I also like to chip in on the design side of things, whether it is on new features or just adapting an existing design for new requirements or different scenarios.

3.  What would you tell someone who’s considering joining the technology team?

I would tell them that this is a very passionate, bright, motivated and diverse team, and I’m honored to be a part of it. PatientsLikeMe isn’t a place to go if you have a big ego. We work together, we collaborate, we give and receive constructive criticism, we strive to make each other better, and we strive to give our members the best user experience possible. If you want a genuine, honest-to-goodness chance to build something that has a chance to change the world, this is where you want to be.

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Interested in making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking to hire a Senior Ruby on Rails / Web Application Developer, Business Development Manager, Graphic Designer and more at the moment.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our monthly blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features employees from different departments.  So far, we’ve interviewed User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea, Research Assistant Shivani Bhargava, Office Manager Alison Dutton, Research Scientist Timothy Vaughan, Biz Dev’er Arianne Graham, Product Manager Maureen Oakes and Community Manager Jeanette DeVita.  Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Boyle, who joined the company six months ago to help us maintain excellent quality assurance (QA).  What that means is that when you find a bug in our platform, Brian is the guy who makes sure it gets fixed!

1.  What’s surprised you the most since joining PatientsLikeMe in March?

PatientsLikeMe is an amazing office to work in. I was immediately welcomed by a team of talented and brilliant individuals. The people here are so nice to be around. The bar of excellence is raised daily, and we challenge ourselves to produce the best possible product. Every morning I arrive to an atmosphere that is rich with confidence and satisfaction of our product.

2.  Tell us about the role of the Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer.

My job at PatientsLikeMe is to collect bug reports from users and co-workers and send them to the engineers. The engineers take the information, locate the problem and fix the code that caused the error. When I collect the bug reports, I research what is causing the problem and prioritize the bug queue. The bugs on my radar are ones that a user would find and that could disrupt their experience on the site. Solving these problems is very rewarding and important for the user experience.

3.  What do you find satisfying – as well as challenging – about your job?

Working closely with users to understand their perspective and then carrying that viewpoint to the engineers is my first priority. It can be challenging working through the volume of requests and researching all of them, while putting them in an acceptable order to be fixed. Fortunately, the engineers are very helpful, offering insights and understanding. I sit with a team of amazing developers I can turn to and ask for help. Working with the engineers to solve problems is immensely satisfying.

4.  I understand you have a lot of active hobbies, such as rock climbing and skiing.  How does that fit into your approach to wellness?

I have found that engaging my mind and body in physical activity encourages a healthy perspective to my thought process. My time away from work is spent working on goals and physical challenges. I have a few different levels of activities that I use to distill my thought process and better serve my prioritization skills.

Skiing and team sports are hobbies that I do every once in awhile that allow me to focus on something new for a day. The next level of activities are accomplished a few times a week; rock climbing, yoga, mountain biking and road biking are things I can do after work. My favorite activity is skydiving. I have been jumping out of planes (almost) every warm weekend since 2007. I have over 550 jumps, and I am a tandem instructor at Jumptown in Orange, MA.

My passion in skydiving is tandem jumping and big way jumping. Tandem jumping is hooking up a first jump student to my parachute and taking them on their first skydive. Big way jumping is when I take my own parachute and go up with 60 of my closest friends and jump out of three different airplanes at the same time. I use skydiving to set long term goals. It can take years to attain certain skills in skydiving, and accomplishing those goals is very rewarding.

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Interested in making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking for a Marketing Analyst, Outcomes Research Scientist and more at the moment.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our monthly blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features employees from different departments.  So far, we’ve interviewed User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea, Research Assistant Shivani Bhargava, Office Manager Alison Dutton, Research Scientist Timothy Vaughan, Biz Dev’er Arianne Graham and Product Manager Maureen Oakes.  Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeanette DeVita, who came on board as a Community Manager in February 2011.

1.  What were your first impressions upon joining PatientsLikeMe?

I was very excited to see the job listing for a Community Manager at PatientsLikeMe. I have a background in nonprofits, and I was looking to shift to the for-profit sector. I was thrilled to find a job at a company that was for-profit but with the heart of a nonprofit.

It was clear that the employees at PatientsLikeMe wanted to make a difference in the lives of patients and that was something I wanted to do too. It’s important to me to feel like my work makes the world a better place and working at PatientsLikeMe gives me that feeling.

I was also impressed and excited by the company culture at PatientsLikeMe.  Every Friday there’s a lunchtime presentation and everyone eats together; there are no cubicles, there’s interesting artwork on the walls; teams take meetings sitting on couches together and blow off steam by playing Guitar Hero and ping pong.

2.  Tell us what’s involved in being a PatientsLikeMe Community Manager.

Every day I start by reading my messages from patients who have contacted me on the site. I work on a team of Community Managers with Emma Willey and Liz Morgan, so if I need feedback before working through an issue, I talk to the rest of my team. Then I move on to the forum. I read the new conversations in the communities I moderate, and I tag threads [with a topic category] as I read them so that they are easier for patients to find. I also check out the rest of the site, answer questions about how to find information and try to help patients connect with one another and get their questions answered.

Being a Community Manager is a role that involves wearing a lot of hats. On the site I’m a hostess, a source of information, tech support, librarian, conflict manager and a listening ear. On the larger PatientsLikeMe team, I represent the voice of the patient, and I relay what I learn from patients back to my colleagues.

3.  Congratulations on becoming a mom! Did you manage your health online during your pregnancy? Have you kept up with that since your son was born?

Thanks so much! I started monitoring my health online as I prepared to get pregnant, and I did it through my entire pregnancy. I began with monitoring my temperature and then I kept track of my exercise, my weight, my size and, of course, I kept a close eye on the calendar. Since I suddenly had so many appointments to keep track of, I found myself more reliant than ever on my calendar.

I saw a strong correlation in how I felt with how much walking I did and how much water I drank. By monitoring those two pieces of data I was able to quickly learn that I felt great when I drank 64+ ounces of water a day and walked to and from work.  I felt not so great when I didn’t.

After my son was born, I was glad I had already adjusted to keeping detailed records about myself and my health.  Now I monitor his feedings, sleep and other baby business using an app recommended to me by a friend. It makes it much easier to remember when he last ate when my husband and I both have an app that tells us.  I also continue to keep up with my exercise online and how many steps I take each day. I find it motivating, and I’m hooked on personal data now.

4.  What kind of comments from PatientsLikeMe members really make your day?

I love hearing that a patient’s life has been changed because of PatientsLikeMe. For example, when a patient connects with others like them for the first time; when they find real feedback and experiences from other patients who have already tried a treatment they are considering; or when learn about home modifications or life-changing tools from other patients, I go home feeling great about the work I do. Life can be very lonely, and life with a serious medical condition can be even more isolating. Making that burden a little easier for our users to bear is a great reason to come to work in the morning.

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Interested in making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking for an Analytics Strategist, Marketing Analyst and more at the moment.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our monthly blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features employees from different departments.  So far, we’ve interviewed User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea, Research Assistant Shivani Bhargava, Office Manager Alison Dutton and Research Scientist Timothy Vaughan. Today we hear from Arianne Graham, a Harvard MBA graduate who joined the business development team in 2010.  What current project is she most excited about?  And how is working at PatientsLikeMe different than her previous healthcare jobs?  Find out that and more in our interview.

1.  What’s it like to be part of the business development team?

When spending time with friends and family or even meeting new people, I’m always excited to answer that small talk question: “What do you do?” I happen to think I have the best job ever.

As part of the business development team here at PatientsLikeMe, my colleagues and I work with everyone who cares about patients (including providers, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, pharmacies, and many more!). We look at how the real-world data shared by our members can transform their businesses for the benefit of patients everywhere.

Sounds like fun, right? Most of the time, it really is. This is also hard work, though. Sometimes I feel as though the rest of the world is not yet ready to hear the patient’s voice. The truth of each patient does not always fit perfectly inside the constraints of a randomized clinical trial or a research protocol. But it’s here to stay, and we are actively finding ways to layer this emerging data source on top of the world in which we live. That’s reason enough for me to get up every day and come to work with my very talented team.

2.  What kind of projects are you working on at the moment?

I am often the first contact for individuals and organizations that contact us via partners@patientslikeme.com or support@patientslikeme.com. We receive multiple messages a day with ideas regarding how PatientsLikeMe might work with another company or integrate a new technology. It’s up to me to prioritize which opportunities to pursue now given the market landscape, and which to save for later.

One of our most basic and popular services is clinical trial recruiting. On any given day, I have to do something related to one of these campaigns. The members that use PatientsLikeMe are probably more likely than most to be motivated to try investigative therapies, to access better healthcare, or to simply participate in research. Finding the right patients for a study can be so difficult, but thanks to the demographic and health data patients report to us, we can easily let patients know about clinical trials for which they may be eligible.

The project I am most excited about, however, is a clinical trial of PatientsLikeMe as an intervention. We have partnered jointly with a pharmaceutical company and an integrated payor/health system to empirically test the effects of the website on patient activation and health literacy. Additionally, this is one of the first projects to really integrate PatientsLikeMe into the clinical encounter between doctor and patient. We haven’t publicly announced the details yet, so stay tuned. I can’t wait to tell you more!

3.  How have your parents – who are both doctors – influenced your career?

As the child of two pediatricians, I know I was exposed to the healthcare industry and certainly aware of it more early in life than most people. I noticed and appreciated that they treat their patients as people, not diseases. They remain committed to serving their patients, to helping them get better so they can lead productive lives. For them, the medical field is not so much a job as a calling. I know I felt led to serve, too. Even when I abandoned my pre-med plans in college, I knew that healthcare is where my heart is. I just found another way to pursue it.

I cannot imagine working outside of this industry because it appeals to me on so many levels: I can serve others, and I’ll never get bored. Healthcare is what we used to call in consulting a “big, hairy, ugly.” It is messy and complicated, it affects us all, and there are no clear answers. All of that makes this sector intellectually stimulating and extremely rewarding.

4.  You’ve worked for pharmaceutical companies, a hospital and a consulting firm.  How is working at PatientsLikeMe different?

I think all of my previous work experience has prepared me well because I lean heavily on what I know to be true in healthcare in my current role. While I knew exactly what to expect in pharma, hospitals, and in consulting, PatientsLikeMe has proven to be a bit like the Wild Wild West. We are creating a world that never existed before: where patients take charge, and their real experiences are being integrated into the healthcare system around them. There are absolutely no rules yet. It’s exciting and uncomfortable; inspiring and frustrating. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Interested in making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking for a Marketing Coordinator, Community Moderator, Research Client Manager and more at the moment.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We are continuing to reveal just that with our monthly blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features various employees from different departments.  Last month, we featured an interview with Research Scientist Mike Massagli, PhD, and today, we share our interview with User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea, who holds the distinction of being the very first PatientsLikeMe employee.  Find out what convinced him to join PatientsLikeMe as a fledgling start-up…and why he’s stayed for the long haul.

1. You’re a User Experience Engineer at PatientsLikeMe. Tell us what that involves.

At PatientsLikeMe, we use a methodology called Agile Scrum, where our focus is on the quick turnaround of short, attainable goals, usually in a two-week period. It’s fast-paced and never boring. Our engineering team is made up of around 10 Engineers, a Product Manager, a Designer and two User Experience Engineers, all under the direction of our Director of Engineering, Steve Hammond.

My focus is on translating the visual designs into a usable and accessible user interface. However, at PatientsLikeMe, we all have a lot of shared responsibility for driving the direction we take with the user experience. Given our short cycles of releasing website updates every two weeks, it’s invaluable to have every member of our team focused on what is most important for the patient. We don’t always get it right the first time, but we take the feedback we get from our members to constantly improve the user experience.

2. What kind of projects are you working on right now?

Currently, we’re wrapping up a long project that will allow our members to describe more about their health experience in the context of the information they already share. We have been testing this for a while with patient volunteers, and the feedback we have received is very positive. We believe it will encourage even more sharing, which, in turn, will build the body of medical knowledge. That’s our ultimate goal.

Aside from that, I’m working on some features to improve the accessibility of the website. Based on feedback of a patient who uses assistive technology (AT), we’re trying to cut down the number of steps to access the essential features on our pages.

3. What do you like best about being a part of the PatientsLikeMe team?

Our team environment, like our entire company culture, is highly collaborative and based around lots of direct communication. Our weekly Journal Club presentations with outside speakers are a highlight, but we also have regular company presentations on what we’re working on, as well as informal “brown-bag” presentations on technical subjects and the like. Sharing is a focus even for the employees at PatientsLikeMe. It helps that the people we have are the smartest I have ever worked with, and they are passionate about the company’s mission.

On a more personal note, our team keeps it witty and light-hearted. It’s always fun to be in the office, but even on days when we work remotely, the laughs keep rolling over our team collaboration tools.   As an aside, I’d like to point out that PatientsLikeMe is hiring. If you enjoy working with hilarious and talented folks that are trying to help people, maybe you’d like to look at our Careers page.

4. As someone who’s been with the company since the early days, what’s the PatientsLikeMe milestone that you’re most proud of?

That’s a very interesting question. I think being the very first employee at PatientsLikeMe is what I’m most proud of. When I received the call from Co-Founders Jeff Cole and Ben and Jamie Heywood about what they were putting together, I had little hesitation about joining an effort that was aimed at helping improve the lives of patients.

Through that time, we have contributed legitimate scientific discoveries and built a team of people who excel in their fields in the service of a mission that is bigger than any one of us. I couldn’t have predicted that we would succeed when I started here in 2005, but I believed enough in the goals of PatientsLikeMe to make the leap. Seeing what we have accomplished in that time is the most gratifying thing of all.

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Interested in joining our engineering team and making a difference in patients’ lives?  Check out our Careers page to see our current job openings.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is looking for a Senior User Experience Designer and Experienced Ruby on Rails Developers at the moment.