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,  Research Scientist Timothy Vaughan and Biz Dev’er Arianne Graham.  Today we’d like to introduce you to Product Manager Maureen Oakes, or as she’s affectionately known around the office, “Mo.”

1.  You’re the Product Manager at PatientsLikeMe.  Tell us what that involves.

A little bit of everything! I read in an article that product managers are like “embedded CEOs” because you drive the core decisions to improve and change the product, which in this case is the PatientsLikeMe website. That means different things depending on the circumstances. Sometimes my job is getting all the right people in the room to make a decision, and sometimes it is making a decision myself. In all cases, it involves listening, asking good questions, weighing all the options and following up to make sure what needs to get done actually happens.

Each day I split my time between planning ahead for enhancements we could make to the site in the coming weeks and months and ensuring the things the engineering team is building now are going smoothly.  For example, when we are trying to decide what to work on, we have to ask, “Is A more important than B? What is affected if we choose to work on C instead? Who benefits most from each of those options and how much work is it to accomplish?” It’s my job to tee up those questions so that we are working on the right things at the right time.

The same goes for things we are building now – there are tradeoffs and decisions to be made all day long.

2.  As a longtime employee, what milestones stick out to you?

There are so many! But I think the first would be the launch of the mood conditions community in 2008. I joined PatientsLikeMe in 2007 so it was the first time I participated in building out a community – hearing the research team’s thoughts on disease measures, showing examples to get feedback from patients, and being there to welcome the first members. There was a New York Times Magazine article about PatientsLikeMe around the time we launched, so several thousand people joined that first week. It was amazing to see the community take off so quickly.

In 2010, we started work on another milestone – a project to open up PatientsLikeMe to anyone with any condition. That was a ton of work, but it was great to have the whole company focusing on a very clear goal and working closely together to achieve it. I was especially motivated because my mother was undergoing treatment for lymphoma at the time, and every day I wished we had had PatientsLikeMe members and tools available for her condition. In 2011, she went into remission and PatientsLikeMe opened its doors to anyone with any condition, so that was huge, both personally and professionally.

3.  You’re also the resident baker at PatientsLikeMe.  What treats do you make?

I’m a big fan of celebrating birthdays so my standing offer is to bake whatever a PatientsLikeMe employee requests for his or her birthday each year.

I’ve made all kinds of things – Oreo and whipped cream desserts, carrot cupcakes, brownies, apple cake, triple chocolate cake. But the biggest challenge has definitely been Boston Cream Pie. It is not easy to make, but it’s a huge hit, so now lots of people keep requesting it.

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Want to make a difference in patients’ lives?  Maureen is currently searching for a Senior User Experience (UX) Designer to join her team.  “This may be my biggest project right now!” she says.  “We already have one great designer, but we need help to keep improving the site at a faster pace.”  Learn more about the benefits of working at PatientsLikeMe on our Careers page.

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 employees from different departments.  So far, we’ve interviewed User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea, Research Assistant Shivani Bhargava and Office Manager Alison Dutton.  Today we hear from Research Scientist Timothy Vaughan, who earned his PhD in physics before deciding to focus his simulation and modeling skills on medical questions.

1.  What research projects are you working on at the moment?

I am working on a few different things. My primary focus recently has been on modeling multiple sclerosis (MS). As just about anyone with the disease can tell you, MS is a highly complex, highly variable illness. To even get a good description of the experience of a patient is a challenge. As one of the “mathy” people at PatientsLikeMe, my job is to try to make the description as systematic and quantitative as possible, because mathematical relationships are often the best tools in trying to solve the underlying puzzle of what the body is doing.

So, for example, I have recently been looking at some of the ways that symptoms and the Multiple Sclerosis Rating Scale (MSRS) are interrelated, which may help us understand how functioning and symptoms go together. And, although I am focusing on MS, I am constantly struck by how certain concepts seem to apply across conditions, so I am hopeful that we can learn things that will ultimately help all our patients.

2.  Tell us how computer simulation and modeling help you do your job.

It is fair to say that my job would not even exist without computer simulation and modeling! Partly because clinical trials and other scientific methodologies have become so expensive and time-consuming, scientists in healthcare have to really become creative in trying to learn more about patients and their conditions. Simulations and modeling are becoming essential tools in the era of “big data” that PatientsLikeMe is at the forefront of.

3.  What do you see ahead in terms of PatientsLikeMe’s research potential?

I have to quote the Danish physicist Niels Bohr: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” I think almost everyone in healthcare right now believes that patient-reported outcomes are going to be of greater and greater influence in the future…but no one is 100% certain how!

In many ways, research is forced to be in a somewhat opportunistic position, because one is never quite sure where the most promising frontiers are, where one is most likely to discover something interesting and useful for patients. But our research potential really stems from our patients. Their willingness to share how they are doing, in so many ways, gives us potential to not just work on what appears to be interesting now, but to quickly respond to new directions that might arise in the future.

4.  What are the three best things about working at PatientsLikeMe?

For me personally, the best thing about PatientsLikeMe is that every morning I wake up knowing that everything I work on is not just scientifically “interesting” (although I like that!), but also really has the potential to help patients’ lives. So, even though the work can be frustrating at times, it is always worthwhile.

The second awesome thing, and it’s almost a cliché to say around is here, is that the people here are so passionate and smart and great to work (and play!) with. Seeing other people working hard and caring deeply about what they do is a great motivation.  The third awesome thing: Alison makes sure there is a constant supply of York Peppermint Patties in the kitchen.

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.  So far, we’ve featured people like User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea and Research Assistant Shivani Bhargava.  Today, we share our interview with Office Manager Alison Dutton, who’s been keeping things running smoothly – and hilariously – for the past two years.  Find out what we learned from Alison about life at the epicenter of a startup.

1.  What’s it like being the Office Manager of a growing startup?

I have heard this particular question many times before and each time I give a different answer – all depending, of course, on how the previous day has ended. It can be incredibly exhilarating and at the same time exhausting mentally as well as physically. The important thing to note is that it’s never, ever dull.

Although this can be said for most positions in a startup, for me, I relish the spontaneity and craziness that ensues on a daily basis. I have had experiences with established companies that had more of a corporate culture. It is Groundhog Day all over again. Since I have a few startups under my belt, I am familiar with the energy, which is so addictive.  Everyone should try it once in their lifetime.

2.  You have such a great sense of humor.  Is that a requirement in your position?

The humor isn’t just a prerequisite for the job but also for life in general. I grew up the only girl in a household of boys, so I probably had to develop a sense of humor and thick skin a little quicker than most. As far as it coming in handy for my job – things change quickly in a startup environment and specifically with a job like mine, where one day you’re preparing for a board meeting and the next day you’re planning a company field trip to the local pub. You must be able to roll with it and maintain a smile throughout.

I find that being able to laugh at life – and at myself – helps me make the most of every day, whether I’m having a good one or a bad one. It also helps others relax when things get tense. It’s helpful that I tend to see things in a more positive light. After reading some of the patient profiles on our site, it reminds me of how lucky I am. I can stub my toe 10 times during the day and at the same time realize that I am wickedly overdrawn on my bank account and still laugh at myself.

What it boils down to is appreciating what you have – I am so dang lucky to come to work every day and be with the most remarkable people I have ever known.

3.  Give us a slice of life at the office.  What’s a typical day like for you?

I can always try to schedule my day, but it never truly goes according to plan. Today started with a call from someone trying to find our offices – she was driving from Logan Airport and had no experience with Boston drivers. She did eventually make it, although a little beaten up.

The remainder of the day would probably go something like this…first, check in with our amazing 3-Star and PatientsLikeMeInMotion programs for members. While monitoring that, start in on another job, which may entail booking travel for 3-5 employees, setting up a new employee or managing a build out (we have expanded our offices a couple of times). All the while I am answering random but important questions from employees.

At the same time, I try to maintain incoming invoices, scan resumes, work with marketing on our t-shirts, manage employee expenses, bark at people who don’t clean up after themselves, pay our software licenses, mail tax documents, submit expense reports, cancel expense reports, run to the Apple store for supplies, order food for the tired and hungry and, in between it all, try to grab that first cup of coffee.

4.  What would you tell someone who’s considering working at PatientsLikeMe?

We do important work and require 110% every day. You must be on the ball and able to take little direction and run with it – in other words, if you need someone to dictate your every move, this is not the place for you. We work very hard and at times play very hard, but most importantly, we do it together.

Everyone here is on the same team and, believe it or not, there are no cliques.  People genuinely care about each other. I chalk this up to Team Heywood. Lastly, we have a fairly rigorous interview process, but if you make it through and join the company, you will never look back.

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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 Research Scientist, Senior User Experience Designer, Marketing Associate 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.  So far, we have profiled Research Scientist Mike Massagli and User Experience Engineer Cris Necochea, and today, we share our interview with Research Assistant Shivani Bhargava.  Unlike Mike and Cris, who are both company veterans, Shivani offers the perspective of a more recent hire.  Find out what it’s been like for her to jump in and start her career with our team.

1.  What convinced you to join PatientsLikeMe?

I was recruited right out of undergrad in the Spring of 2010. I was just beginning my job search and a previous employer pointed me to this fantastic startup in Cambridge, MA. It took five…maybe ten minutes to fall completely in love with the website and realize I wanted to help contribute. I really liked the idea of a completely unique healthcare company that was using a creative business model to actually improve healthcare by putting the patient voice first. After two interviews, in which I’m almost positive Paul Wicks and Sally Okun took pity on my bumbling college student enthusiasm, I started working for PatientsLikeMe!

2.  Tell us what it’s like to be part of the Data Operations Team.

Health Data Integrity is the name of the game. And that’s exactly what we do. We make sure that patient data is entered accurately and according to the intentions of the patients themselves. Things have sure gotten more interesting since the expansion of the site to include every condition, but it’s been an educational and enriching process. It’s normal to find us simultaneously working with a diverse number of patients and various medical ontologies and online resources to carefully map the patient vocabulary against an existing clinical one.

It’s also humbling to work with such a qualified team. Between PharmD’s and RN’s, we’ve got degrees and years of experience galore. In fact, I’m the only one with just a mere BA! Everyone on my team continues to amaze me daily with their expertise and ability to work through tough problems. If you put all our heads together, we’re pretty much an unstoppable force at PatientsLikeMe.

3.  What research projects are you working on at the moment?

One of the big things we’re working on as a team is trying to build a medical framework using patient-reported data. Since one of our goals is to map a patient vocabulary, we’re trying to infuse the mountains of enormous data that our users provide with structure and organization, similar to existing medical ontologies. The potential benefits of this would be endless. Overall, it would help research and patient empowerment, and it would allow clinicians to better understand the patient experience.

Of course, it’s not an easy task. Imagine trying to invent an entire language with rules, categories and syntax with just a tiny, yet brilliant team!  Okay, well, maybe it’s not quite like that.  We do, after all, have the help of an online information revolution where we can easily access clinical resources.  Also, we have at our disposal the insightful and diverse patient community at PatientsLikeMe. And because of that, it’s a challenging project that continues to be dynamic and make progress. Look out healthcare systems!

And that is ultimately why I love working at PatientsLikeMe. We’re really out to change the face of the healthcare system and maybe not just here in the states, but internationally too!

4.  How would you describe the PatientsLikeMe work culture?

Well, between free lunches during Journal Club on Fridays [where a different speaker talks to the entire team each week], ping pong breaks in the afternoons and the LEGO station in the engineering pit, it’s hard work. Clearly not meant for the stiff, traditionally-minded laborer at heart.

Kidding aside, the startup environment and more specifically the PatientsLikeMe atmosphere makes working here not at all like work. It’s normal to have impromptu discussions or meetings about new ideas or problem-solving strategies. People are productive here. You are constantly working on new projects, new goals and new aspects of the site, which makes sense given the constantly evolving nature of the website. Everyone brings valuable perspective to the table and together we’re building something that all of us believe in as a cause.

That’s the biggest thing. We’re not a non-profit or a charity organization. We’re a business…with a rather noble and innovative product. And that really lies at the crux of our amazing work culture.

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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 Community Moderator, Marketing Associate, 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.

What’s it like to work at PatientsLikeMe?  We’ll be revealing just that with our new blog series “A Day in the Life,” which features various employees from different departments.  To start this new series off with a veteran perspective, we interviewed Research Scientist Mike Massagli, PhD, one of the longest tenured employees of the company.  Find out what changes he’s witnessed since joining PatientsLikeMe in June 2007.

1.   What’s it been like to watch the company evolve over the last four years?

It has been both interesting and gratifying.  Interesting to watch how we evolved from our initial communities – ALS, MS and Parkinson’s, all essentially neurological conditions – to come to grips with other types of chronic disease and to try and achieve a necessary balance between general tools that would be useful to any patient and disease- or condition-specific tools that will be relevant to patients when they are needed.  What has been gratifying is that we have always been able to find people to rise to these challenges.  We’ve found users of PatientsLikeMe very willing to help (and forgiving when things haven’t gone perfectly smoothly), so that we are now in a position to provide all patients with the potential benefits of PatientsLikeMe.

That’s still a work in progress, of course, but the site is getting better all the time.  I am optimistic that we are getting closer to realizing the ultimate power of PatientsLikeMe, which is to fully show the distribution of responses to treatments and help match patients to the part of that distribution that is actually relevant to them.

2.  Talk about PatientsLikeMe’s Journal Club speaker series and why you started it.

The Journal Club is something we started in January 2009 to provide some space and time outside of the routine workflow to discuss (usually) substantive topics relating to PatientsLikeMe.  The goals include:

• giving people who are working on something behind the scenes some visibility and an opportunity for feedback;
• sharing research that has implications for the data we collect or how we collect and present it;
• talking about features in other websites that could have utility in PatientsLikeMe
• sharing information or ideas about how to foster the growth and ‘health’ of online communities; and
• presenting intriguing solutions to seemingly technical problems that may have broader implications for the user experience.

We also bring outside speakers who can inform these areas of discourse.  Everyone at PatientsLikeMe attends and is enthusiastic about learning and critically examining new ideas and issues.

3.  What research projects are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I’m finishing up a couple of projects focusing on the experience of organ transplant patients.  For one of them I examined forum posts about issues related to medication adherence, then combined this with a review of the literature and prior measures of adherence problems to design a survey that will provide information describing patient preferences for possible adherence support mechanisms.  In the other project, a survey is being conducted to test a range of questions about patient quality of life that will hopefully result in a more patient-centered set of questions than currently exists.

In addition to those projects, I’m looking at survey data about six-month changes in the status of fibromyalgia patients and testing how that is associated with the use of PatientsLikeMe.  And I’m working with the team to implement revisions to the Multiple Sclerosis Rating Scale (MSRS).

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

Being part of the PatientsLikeMe team is a unique opportunity to build something that has the power to vastly improve medicine.  By capturing patient reports of their experience of care and treatment on a large scale and in real time, we can improve understanding of how treatments work and for whom they work IRL (in real life), and be a source of information for people that simply has not existed before.

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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 User Experience Designer, Marketing Associate, Research Analyst and more at the moment.