What kinds of things do we cover in our monthly newsletters for members? Take a look at the excerpt below from our April edition. Also, in case you didn’t know, anyone – whether a PatientsLikeMe member or not – can view our current and past newsletters in our Newsletter Archive. See what we’ve been up to recently, and if you are member who’s not opted in to the newsletter, sign up today.

MONTHLY MUSINGS

What’s with sharing, anyways?

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – we believe in the power of openness. By sharing your experiences, healthcare can be changed for the better.  You can monitor your health status and make changes accordingly; you can find out you’re not alone; and both patients and organizations can do research based on your real-world experiences.

Every single patient on our site contributes to this change.  When you add conditions, treatments and symptoms, you’re entering data that enables others to learn from you.  The way we see it, when everyone shares, everyone benefits.  To see how, check out these reports and dig deeper into the individual stories and data.

Treatment Reports
Things you can learn: How is this treatment working for other patients?  What side effects have they reported?  What are the most common dosages?

Symptom Reports
Things you can learn: How many other patients have experienced this symptom?  What are they taking to treat or manage it?  How severe is it for them?

Condition Reports
Things you can learn: Who else has this disease?  When did they experience their first symptom?  What are some of the most common treatments?

Thanks for everything that you’ve shared – and continue to share – at PatientsLikeMe.  Here’s to all that will be learned in 2012 as a result!

- Kate, Emma, Liz, Jeanette & Sharry

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

What’s happening in the forum?  Check out some of these active threads below.  Then jump in with your own questions and answers.

• Do you have a family history of MS? (MS Room)
• Scared of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) (Mental Health Room)
• A roadmap for survival, peace and non-suffering (ALS Room)
• What are your results with muscle relaxants? (FM/CFS/ME Room)
• How to adjust to not working and lower income (Immune Room)

Need help with something on the site?  Visit the PatientsLikeMe Site Help Room for answers from veteran members.

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

Everyone has one.  Tell yours in our new open text box (shown below).  Anyone who follows you will then see your story in their feed.  Stories are also important part of your health journal.  Have you used the new journal feature? Adding a story (and photo!) about any of your conditions is a great way to get started.

This weekend, MIT is hosting the first H@cking Medicine conference and PatientsLikeMe is proud to be a sponsor. The hacking encouraged here isn’t malicious, rather, it refers to a passionate subculture of computer programmers who believe in sharing, openness, and innovation (among other things).  Those are three concepts near and dear to us here at PatientsLikeMe.

The goal of the conference is to inspire new ideas and create new relationships so that everyone will leave invigorated and excited about improving healthcare.  According to the H@cking Medicine website, “By using available tools in unconventional ways, we aim to revolutionize delivery of care, empower patients, and design new models of care. Typically, healthcare innovation is painfully slow and, even worse, often increases the cost.  We can make a difference by creating cost-effective solutions without waiting for fundamental advances in science.”

To kick off the event on the first day, our own Jamie Heywood (keynote) as well as other leaders in the health care field will inspire audience members with ways to find and learn from the best use of openly shared data. The second day is dedicated to team hacking, and gives coders a practical look at what can be done with the available resources.

Read more about this subculture of hackers on Wikipedia and follow the H@cking Medicine conference updates on their website and Twitter.

In these days of Facebook and Twitter, the media is abuzz with news of “over sharing” of sensitive, personal or trivial information – everything from your current location to what you were up to over the weekend.  Members on our site may choose to share some of this, but what about some of the less trivial things in life, like your health information?  Is there such a thing as “over sharing?”  And what about your old “networks,” the ones that are now referred to as your “In Real Life” (IRL) relationships?  How much sharing do you do with them?

For anyone with a life-changing condition, the choices you make in telling (or not telling) others about your diagnosis are a big deal.  There can be both benefits and risks to openly discussing your condition, whether it’s on a website, at work or amongst friends.  To find out more, we conducted a poll amongst 3,858 patients with 10 different conditions, including ALS/PLS/PMA (N=429), Multiple Sclerosis (N=436), Parkinson’s Disease (N=580), HIV (N=137), Mood Conditions (N=513), Fibromyalgia (N=1,031), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / ME (N=129), Epilepsy (N=347), and Organ Transplants (N=256).

How openly have you shared your diagnosis with various people in your life?  This was the focus of the poll.  We asked you to answer this question across seven different networks, including your immediate family, extended family, neighbors, work/school peers, friends from childhood, current circle of friends, and friends/followers on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  We then asked you how many of those people you’ve told (i.e., all of them, most of them, about half of them, a few of them, none of them, or does not apply to me).

The figure above shows you the response from almost 4,000 patients and gives you a sense of the “shape” of sharing in each disease.  Each column represents your personal network (e.g., family); the colorful lines represent your condition (e.g., ALS); and the height of the line represents the mean degree of sharing within a network (e.g., all of them).  So, do you see the lines close to the bottom of the chart?  Those indicate that very few people in those patients’ networks have been told about their diagnosis.

So, what did we find?  First, the most obvious finding is that you are most likely to share your diagnosis with all of your close family (81%), followed by your current circle of friends (51%) and extended family (43%). From there, you’d most likely tell your peers from work or school (29%), your “friends” or followers on social networks (22%), your neighbors (19%), and finally your friends from childhood (16%).  When it comes to your childhood friends and neighbors, the results reveal that you are much more selective about who you choose to tell.  In these categories, the majority (52%) of you indicate that you have told either “a few of them” or “none of them.”

Two conditions (HIV and Mood Conditions) are the least well known among all networks.  For instance, overall results suggest that within a patient’s immediate family, 81% say “all of them” know about the diagnosis.  However, in HIV, this figure is only 50%, and in Mood it’s 56%.  The effect is even more pronounced with weaker social ties, such as neighbors; overall, 19% of respondents said that all of their neighbors knew their diagnosis; the same number was 4% in HIV and only 2% in Mood.

We didn’t only analyze the results by condition.  What about age?  We found that older patients were more likely to have told their neighbors or people at work/ school than younger patients.

Perhaps the richest data (still to be analyzed) is the open-text responses that we received about some of the positive and negative experiences you’ve had as a result of sharing their diagnosis. A positive example from a patient with ALS read:

“I was devastated and overwhelmed initially, but after reading reports of other ALS patients on PatientsLikeMe, I realized I was not in this alone and their comments were so encouraging.  They encouraged me to share with others and share the triumphs/and bad days.”

A patient with HIV shared some of the risks behind making the choice to be open:

“There is still a massive stigma that goes with HIV. Disclosing can be incredibly difficult when it comes to who to tell and when. Too many still have major misconceptions about the disease and what it means for both the person that has the disease and the people around them.”

Thank you to everyone who took a few minutes to take our poll.  Tomorrow, we’re going to look at what you said about how PatientsLikeMe has affected your openness.

Patients like you with life-changing conditions have to make choices every day, just like anyone else. These choices, however, typically have more at stake than how to RSVP to a party or even whether to walk away from an “underwater” home. For patients like you, your lives may be at stake.

I have watched my mother deal with three different types of cancers for more than 25 years, and the choices she had to make for me and my siblings to be successful were stark. As a single mother with a doctorate and two master’s degrees, she had to take jobs that paid less because cancer limited her energy. She took on enormous debt because she wouldn’t let her illness stop her from giving her children a private school education. Those choices started from physical and emotional hardship, then led to economic hardship.

Patients like you – and like my mother – have conditions you didn’t ask for, and your ability to keep a job and maintain economic stability isn’t just based on your talent or training, but also in your management of your conditions. Brought on by infection, age, genetic pre-disposition or unknown causes, these conditions factor into every choice, every decision—and in my mother’s case, which job to seek. We all make choices each day, but patients like you often have to choose between living well and just living.

One of the most important choices for patients like you is how to treat your disease. With your health care team, you try to make the best choice with the given information. The problem is information is scarce, untrustworthy or impersonal. That’s right, impersonal. What is a miracle treatment for one person could land another in the hospital. At PatientsLikeMe, we try to shine light on the information that can help each of you reach your best outcome. This is why we don’t just provide aggregate information, but allow you to access the profile of a person who is taking a medication to see if that person is “like you.”

The figure below speaks to the choices patients like you have to make about your treatments in a world with imperfect information. The chart depicts thousands of patient evaluations of efficacy and tolerability among major therapies across our 22 represented conditions. What jumps out immediately? That treatments for HIV and Parkinson’s are both more effective and easily tolerated than others out there for other diseases. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to research in those areas, and it’s paid off. Many believe Parkinson’s has a cure in sight, and HIV has, in less than 30 years, become a manageable chronic condition rather than a death sentence.

But what if you have other conditions? You are clearly making a choice between efficacy of the medications and the side effects that come with them. While aggregated data is great for directional insight, PatientsLikeMe is designed to let you drill down deeper. You can ask each person taking the treatment how it works for him or her. Why? Like everyone, you trust people like yourself who are going through or have gone through the same experiences. Only patients with similar situations can give you specific insight into what tradeoffs need to be considered when potentially trying a new medication. How will it affect my sleep? Is there daytime fatigue or “down time”? Can I operate heavy machinery? Will this treatment impair my ability to work in my profession?

These are the questions many of you are asking. These are the choices you make every day. My mother made her choices and has lived to see the fruits of her sacrifice. If we at PatientsLikeMe are going to help each of you answer the question, “Given my status, what is the best outcome I can hope to achieve, and how do I get there?”, then we have to continue to show the benefits of openly sharing information with each other. We have to excel at illuminating the real-world efficacy and risks of all kinds of treatments, and we have to help you connect with patients like you in a way that you get personal answers to your questions.

The more data you choose to share, the more we can all make the world of treatment information less imperfect and more personal. Simply stated, we’re all in this together.

In the spirit of the New Year, here are some highlights from our recent newsletter.  Read what patients like you have to say about what they’re most interested in learning from other patients this year.

* * *

	(Amy) What are you most interested in learning from other patients this year?
	(bradley25 – Mood Conditions Community)I find I offer advice to patients more often than I listen. Offering advice helps me; it makes me think about what I am suggesting. More often than not, I find I offer good advice that I do not necessarily follow myself. Hearing the words come out of my mouth can cause me to think about why I may not be doing what I am suggesting and to make changes in my own life.
	(mrskidneysurvivor – Transplants Community)There is not any one thing that I can say I am most interested in learning from other patients like me because I gain knowledge and insight from all patients who have had a transplant or who are waiting for one.  We all have experienced or are still experiencing similar situations and take similar medications and cope with our day-to-day health, and I learn from that. Mine has gotten so bad that I have regular grand mal seizures from time to time, and sometimes it’s hard to carry on a conversation without looking weird.
	(prelado – Parkinson’s Disease Community)Of course, how they’re doing with their medicine, mainly if it is the same as mine.
	(irishtxn – HIV Community)How to keep unwanted stress out of my life! It’s hard enough being one of six siblings living in the same town, much less [being the one living] with our mother. I’m not getting any real support from them as I’d like. My siblings do take care of my mother’s prescription costs, but they rarely offer to come in and get my mother out for while. I might rephrase that [it would be nice] to ask her to their homes.  She rarely ventures away from the house unless it has something to do with the church.  Never gets to see the other children unless it is a holiday such as Christmas.
	(slicky – ALS Community)I am like any other patient.  I have not experienced everything.  There is always something new to learn, and I think the best way to learn is to ask other patients on this site.  The doctors can tell you what they know from reading books or other doctors, but getting knowledge from patients firsthand is the best way to learn how to cope or [determine] the best equipment to use, or the best treatments. I am not saying every comment on PatientsLikeMe is right, but most of the information you get on this site really is valuable to all patients and their caregivers.  The best thing is you can choose to try it for yourself or ignore it.  It really is amazing to see all these patients come together to help one another.  There is no stupid question.  If you want to know, just ask and you will get a response. And the best thing is it is from people all over the world, so some countries may have different studies or trials or meds we do not have here in the U.S.  I have talked to people all over the world who have asked me how I have had ALS so long and what do I do to keep going.  I tell them my regimen.  I also tell them I can only tell them what seems to work for me, as most everyone knows ALS affects each of us differently, so what works for one person may not work for another.
	(sunnyt – Fibromyalgia/CFS Community)When I discovered PatientsLikeMe it was a God-send! It was so good to know I was not alone in this. Most people do not believe what we go through. It is so hard to explain the pain and tiredness of this. I know, I was once one of the doubters. This year I would very much like to learn how other deal with this, for one. And what treatments others use also, more alternative treatments. The list goes on…like how to cope everyday with not knowing how you are going to feel, where you will hurt or how tired you will be. I am sure of one thing, I will probably find other answers to questions I did not even know I had! I can not thank PatientsLikeMe enough for the support and information I have gotten in the past year.
	(suevand72 - Epilepsy Community) I don’t really know what I plan on learning this year. I really haven’t given it a lot of thought since I am so busy at home with family and work, and now I am going back to school part-time. I know everyone is just trying to get back to normal after the holidays. But I live in a family where nothing ever slows down. Believe me, you want it to, but it won’t. I do learn more about seizures (epilepsy) each year.
	(Sapphyr – MS Community)As usual, tips for living with a disability that have actually worked.

We recently sat down with our executive team here at PatientsLikeMe in our first-ever roundtable-format podcast.  In this PatientsLikeMeOnCall^TM interview, we ask Co-founders Ben and Jamie Heywood, Chief Marketing Officer David S. Williams III, and R&D Director Paul Wicks PhD to discuss why our recent series themes are so important to the history and future of PatientsLikeMe.

Blog Series Themes:

1. “Share and Compare” – where you learned more about how and why patients like you are sharing their health information to put their experiences in context.
2. “One for All” – including visualizations on how one member of a community can be the catalyst for a universe of unparalleled dialogue and support.

While discussing how patients can continue to drive the health care process, they also help us preview this week’s discussion called “Treat Us Right.”

Treat Us Right
In this series, we focus on how you can see if your treatment is right, just by the information shared by patients like you; and how important your shared information is to research efforts – both for academia and industry to learn how they can help each of you make good choices about your treatments.  We’ve heard you tell industry to “Treat Us Right” and we will talk more about it this week.

We kick off “Treat Us Right” week tomorrow with Research Scientist Catherine Brownstein, MPH, PhD describing why it’s critical to compare the PatientsLikeMe communities with the general population of the diseases to begin to assess the validity of treatment outcomes reported on the site.  Stay tuned.

Want to follow our blog?  Check out the sidebar to the right to sign up for a RSS Feed, email reminders or to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.  (And don’t forget to “Share This” any time you see content you like).

We’ve been learning about how connected our patients are this week in our blog series called “One for All.”  In the first two blogs by Jeff Cole, we read (and saw through cool graphics) how some of our members are initiating an unparalleled universe of dialogue.  Today, we sit down with one of those members, Diamondlil58.   A true “diamond” in the MS community, she has left more than 16,000 comments to  welcome other members and get conversation started. Here’s our interview with one of the founders of our PatientsLikeMe “Welcome Wagon,” Diamondlil58.

	(Liz) How and why did you start welcoming people?
	(Diamondlil58) I was welcomed to PatentsLikeMe by two lovely ladies – JHCamero and Greeneyes.  Their messages made me feel welcome. I wanted to give back to the MS Community.  I didn’t feel that I knew enough about the disease and the effects it had on others to offer advise in the forum.  But, greeting people is something that I felt comfortable doing.
	(Liz) What type of responses do you get from people you welcome?
	(Diamondlil58) I have received many nice replies from new patients.  Some tell me their experiences,  others ask questions or request help setting up their profile page.  Some want to know my view on therapies and treatments.  I continue to welcome because it has been rewarding to me.  I understand first hand how scary the MS diagnosis can be; how friends and family can’t possibly understand what it’s like to feel the way we do; how we can be perceived as lazy; or the fear of parking in a handicap parking spot and hoping no one verbally attacks us.  Welcoming give others an opportunity to view a profile and helps them see what they can do with theirs.
	(Liz) Do you keep in touch with people you welcome?
	(Diamondlil58) I do keep in touch with so many people that I have welcomed through this site.  Some through Facebook, others in email.  I’ve even met several in the past year or so.  I have built some wonderful friendships here and make more everyday.
	(Liz) What is one thing you’ve learned from looking at new member’s profiles?
	(Diamondlil58) That we have all different backgrounds.  That we are not all the same but we all share one thing in common and that gives us something to build on to support each other.
	(Liz) Do you feel more engaged with the site and its members as a result of the Welcome Wagon?
	(Diamondlil58) Absolutely!  I wouldn’t do it if it was negative or wasn’t rewarding.  It’s my way of giving back to the MS Community.  I have a great appreciation for the founders of this site, the staff, and the caregivers that join us.  This site has been therapeutic for me in more ways than one, and I am so grateful that I came across it three years ago surfing the internet looking for information on my symptoms.
	(Liz) We’re glad you did too.  Thanks so much for keeping the wagon rolling, Diamondlil58.  You’re an inspiration.

In yesterday’s post, we looked at some of the ways members of the PatientsLikeMe community are connecting with other patients and the value they are getting from it.  Today, we’ll highlight how one person can make an enormous difference and inspire you with her ability to connect with others.

One method of reaching out to another member on PatientsLikeMe is by leaving a comment on their profile page.  Often, you exchange comments to inquire about specific data on someone’s profile or to thank them for sharing.  However, one of the most common uses of the comments functionality is for existing members to welcome new members to the community.  This is has been affectionately coined the “Welcome Wagon,” and it is most prominent in our MS community.  Today, more than 71% of members in that community get a comment within the first 2 days.  Receiving a comment from a veteran PatientsLikeMe member when you first join the site is a great way to “welcome” you aboard and make you feel a part of the community.

A large part of the effectiveness of the MS Welcome Wagon can be attributed to a member named Diamondlil58.  Of the 150,000 comments that have been left on PatientsLikeMe, Diamondlil58 has left a staggering 16,000 of them, addressed to over 15,000 different members.  The graph above shows just how extensively Diamondlil58 has connected with the community through commenting.  In the graph, the dots represents patients in our MS community, and the lines represent a comment between them.  Diamondlil58 is the large green dot near the center.  Notice how she has touched both the inter-connected network of patients (on the right), as well as sent out a huge number of comments to others who aren’t yet as well-connected (the moon-like diagram on the left).  A large portion of these comments were part of the Welcome Wagon.

While the Welcome Wagon was started in the MS community, it has definitely caught on in other communities.  Here is a look at how Babsie, an active member in our Fibromyalgia community, has reached out to welcome new members.  Like Diamondlil38, Babsie has helped create a network of dialogue and connection between patients like you.

It’s inspiring to see how one person can touch so many.  Members often tell us how beneficial it is to have a way to find “patients like me.”  (In fact, we cited a few examples yesterday from our research study that shows just how valuable that can be to one’s health).  However, that “find” functionality alone is not what makes this community what it is today.  It’s the people who are using it.  It’s the people who are willing to openly share with one another; the people who reach out to make those connections (sometimes initiated by beacons, like Diamondlil58); it’s people like you who make the most of being a member of PatientsLikeMe.

The next two blogs in this series will include interviews with Diamondlil58 and Babsie.  Stay tuned as we climb aboard the Welcome Wagon and hear what they have to say.

Ever wonder what your fellow members were up to on their sponsored walks and runs in various states across the country? Last week, PatientsLikeMe launched a Flickr page for the PatientsLikeMeInMotion^TM program. Now you can see photos of members just like you in motion!   We are excited to share the experience of sponsored teams and three-star members with everyone.

Since its inception in 2009, PatientsLikeMeInMotion^TM has sponsored more than 115 teams across seven disease communities.  With over 2, 100 participants to date, the program has given many members the chance to demonstrate their PatientsLikeMe spirit as well as connect with others who have shared similar experiences.

It’s always great to see how PatientsLikeMe members are just as passionate offline as they are online.  Now, everyone can catch a glimpse our members in action from New York to Ohio to California!  The PatientsLikeMeInMotion^TM Flickr page currently hosts photos from walks in the ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, Transplants, Fibromyalgia and Mood communities…with more to come.  We are proud to feature events such as The National MS Society‘s “Walk MS” series, ALS Association’s “Walk to Defeat ALS” series, Parkinson’s Unity Walk, and events run by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (just to name a few). Have photos you would like to submit? We would love to see them.  Email us.

Thank you to all the members who have contributed their time and photos to PatientsLikeMeInMotion^TM. You continue to inspire others.  And thanks to all the members of the PatientsLikeMe community for continuing to share.

“We the people…have the right to our own health data.”

That’s part of a collective new Declaration of Health Rights, officially unveiled tonight on the newly launched HealthDataRights.org. It is time to turn the conversation from fear and privacy to sharing data and finding new treatments and better care.

The Declaration represents reality that what we are doing does not work and does not serve the patient, and this reality is being declared tonight simultaneously via blogs by all stakeholders in healthcare.  I recently wrote about how sharing is a right.  This Declaration articulates these inalienable rights, as it provides a straightforward definition of health data rights to ensure the flow of meaningful data.  We are that much closer to getting you, the patient, at the center of the health system.

This started with a simple conversation; a conversation about sharing data between two health systems that spurred additional conversation and more.  In the end, so many of us agreed that what we need to do is let the data flow and the information become meaningful. Our collective goal is to ensure that healthcare gets better, quality is improved, and yes, treatments are developed faster.  That is what we stand for and that is what we are working to do.

Below is the Declaration in its entirety.  Read it aloud.  Think about what it means to you.  To us, and the thousands of patients we represent at PatientsLikeMe, this Declaration means that we can truly participate in our own healthcare.  To us, the endorsements of well-known and respected healthcare leaders and organizations for this Declaration signify our nation’s unity in preserving the right to have and share health data.  This is why PatientsLikeMe endorses this Declaration.

Once you’ve read it, know that you, too, can endorse our Declaration of Health Data Rights.  To learn more, go to www.HealthDataRights.org and don’t forget, you have the right.

Declaration of Health Data Rights

In an era when technology is allowing personal health information to be more easily stored, updated, accessed and exchanged, the following rights should be self-evident and inalienable. We the people:

•    Have the right to our own health data
•    Have the right to know the source of each health data element
•    Have the right to take possession of a complete copy of our individual health data, without delay, at minimal or no cost; If data exist in computable form, they must be made available in that form
•    Have the right to share our health data with others as we see fit

These principles express basic human rights as well as essential elements of health care that are participatory, appropriate and in the interests of each patient. No law or policy should abridge these rights.

So what can you do?  You can endorse it here ; you can endorse it via Twitter (enter #myhealthdata); you can join our  Facebook page and show your support; and perhaps you can even record and share a video reading the Declaration aloud… “I have the right to my own health data.”  Yes, you do.

We do not live our lives alone. We live our lives in collaboration with others. We communicate our needs and our goals, and together we work to achieve them. This is exceptionally true for families and individuals dealing with illness. Whether you’re dealing with depression, or pain, or perhaps the fear and stigma of HIV, or the impairment that comes from MS, Parkinson’s or ALS, what helps us the most is when those around us reach out and share their support and advice.

You would think that your ability to share would be as much your right as speech, but is it? It’s not clear that is true in healthcare today, nor is it clear that such a right will be protected tomorrow. Privacy is also a right – a right to not share what you do not want shared. It’s a fair and just expectation that the doctors and clinicians you employ to support you in your illness will not share your information without your permission. Today, I fear that privacy has become much more than a right; it has become a goal. When that happens, people begin to find ways to make it difficult to share in the name of privacy.

More than once we have been asked by people in the medical system whether patients are allowed to share information with each other like they do on PatientsLikeMe. In fact, in some countries you can read their rules in a certain way and reasonably deduce that this type of sharing is not allowed. It is vitally important that we do not let this become a reality in the U.S.  There are some that would take away your right to share because they do not believe you are competent to weigh the risks and benefits of sharing, and make a sound decision. Imagine being forced to sign a document before you email a friend on PatientsLikeMe with a question about a symptom? This could be a possible consequence of ill intentioned privacy legislation.

We are working to ensure that sharing is preserved as a right. We know that you share with us, and each other, because you trust that we will do the right thing with that knowledge. At PatientsLikeMe, we are working hard to ensure we earn your trust every step of the way. To do this, we focus our energies on ways to help discover new things about each disease here and support the research system. We do this in the spirit of openness espoused in our Openness Philosophy. We work to be transparent about our business model and our decisions, and try to be accessible to you to answer your questions as you participate in our communities.

It remains our hope that you are wowed like we are about what is possible when we work together to make our healthcare system, and our lives, better. We have seen so much healing between all of you here on PatientsLikeMe, and it is because we are all sharing together – not alone.

PatientsLikeMe was recently asked to testify before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). The NCVHS Subcommittee on Privacy, Confidentiality and Security is responsible for exploring these aforementioned issues as they relate to healthcare, and ran a 3-day hearing to spur informative dialogue about the future of e-healthcare. I was honored to represent PatientsLikeMe, and the thousands of patient members of our communities, as I testified on all of our behalf at that hearing.

As I said in the hearing, openness is what is and can help patients. It’s what matters. We believe in the concept called “The Network Patient” – an approach that puts patients first by giving you what you need to know when you need to know it, and empowering you to act on that information. As members of PatientsLikeMe, you have chosen to embrace openness and take control of your health. You volunteer your health information, your experiences, your life – all in an effort to improve your care, support others, and move research forward.

Here are a few excerpts from our prepared testimony statement that expand on privacy, openness and the future of our health system.

“From our experiences at PatientsLikeMe, we know patients are aware of the issues. They understand and weigh the risks and benefits, and are intelligently making rational choices about where they are comfortable sharing information and how their information will be used to help. If we infringe on this right to share or speak (in the interest of preventing discrimination), we are preventing the flow of information and, by our read, acting contrary to the values on which our country was founded.

Privacy is also more than a legal concept, it is also a philosophical concept. A modern focus on privacy as a goal, not as a right, has moved the line to the point that medicine is slowed, treatments are delayed, and patients die for failure to have what they need when they need it. We have substituted real harm for mostly theoretical harm. We would even argue that the philosophical focus on privacy is a bad thing. We believe that openness is much more powerful concept than privacy in medicine, and one that gives patients the power to take control of their health…

We have to begin to work on building a society that allows the variation in human health and the variation in human condition, one that allows people to be philosophically created equal. We need to work on building a society where information is not used to discriminate, but to assist and support and improve. Restricting the flow of information will not advance solving this problem.

This is not a simple transformation, but we believe it is inevitable. The major privacy issues are not only about health records, but the invisible trail of “breadcrumbs” we leave behind us day to day in life. Health is not a separate concept. It is an integrated concept and, in an integrated world, we have to decide how to build a society that can handle the reality that not all are healthy. We need to work together to get the most productivity and life from all of us.

We believe openness can lead the way to such a society.”

The full testimony is available here and posted to the NCVHS website (along with audio archive of the 5/20/09 hearing). A transcript will also be made available soon. These hearings, and of course our blog, are open to the public for comment on these issues. In the spirit of sharing, please share your thoughts with us here.

Today’s patient has a loud and strong voice.  At PatientsLikeMe, we hear you.  You’re saying, “I know this disease, I know how it acts in the real-world, and it’s time to share that with others.”

With thousands of patients sharing data and experiences every day on our site, we’ve decided to launch a report that takes what you, the patient, knows and shares it with you, the patient community at-large.  For obvious reasons, we’re calling it The Patient Voice.

The Patient Voice is a collection of wisdom, sentiments and experiences shared by patients like you regarding important issues you face today.  The reports include PatientsLikeMe member tips, suggested checklists and questions to ask yourself, and real-world patient experiences, as well as some fun facts from about the PatientsLikeMe community.

The first report is from our Mood Conditions Community, representing patients with depression, anxiety, bipolar, OCD and PTSD, on the topic of inpatient therapy (or hospitalization).   It’s a topic that comes up quite a bit in our forum, and patients are openly sharing their positive (and negative) experiences with one another.  We’re now sharing some of the positive experiences with you.  Take a look at the free report and let us know what you think.  Share it with your friends and loved ones who might find it useful.  And, please, join the conversation on PatientsLikeMe today.  You have a voice, so let’s hear it!

Did you know that yesterday was Fibromyalgia Awareness Day?

The PatientsLikeMe Fibromyalgia community is growing exponentially with more than 3400+ members just five months after its launch!  Many  of our members are feeling newly empowered by their membership in our community and are attending events, wearing pins and ribbons and taking the time to spread awareness about what it’s like to live with fibromyalgia.

This sharing mirrors the sharing they do on the site. At PatientsLikeMe, members build their profiles by sharing information about their condition, such as symptoms and treatments.  Top treatments cited to date include rest, heating pads, walking, stretching and the drug Lyrica.  The most commonly listed symptom is pain, followed by fatigue, memory problems and lower back pain.  In addition to sharing health information, patient members also share their personal experiences and tips with each other.  In our forum these past few months, patients have discussed all kinds of topics, including finding the right doctor, coping with pain and fatigue and how to explain how they really feel to their friends and family.

With all this sharing, patients are learning more about themselves, helping each other better understand this condition, and improving their overall quality of life. In fact, in a recent survey amongst some of our members with fibromyalgia, 85% of our respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement – “I feel better about myself because of the recognition by others at PatientsLikeMe that my condition is real.”

If you are not already sharing and learning with other patients like you, we invite you to join our community here at PatientsLikeMe.

Sharing.  It’s a concept we all learn at a very young age.  Oftentimes reminisced as happening in the sandbox, we think back to our young selves giving up what we hold most dear (in this case, some cheap plastic toy) to allow someone else to benefit from it.  It seems so simple and obvious, but how many toddlers do you know that immediately give into the concept…easily handing over that toy without a moment of hesitation or a slight tug back or possibly the more extreme screaming tantrum?   Over time, what happens is that the more they share, the more they see it puts a smile on their friends’ face, or gives them something in common to “chat” about.

You don’t need to be clairvoyant to see where I’m going with this.  Sharing is at the core of PatientsLikeMe, and it’s what makes our communities so special.  More than 32,000 patients are online sharing something they hold dear — details about their health — so that others can see it, learn from it, and dialogue about it.  It’s truly inspirational and something we believe is transforming healthcare as we know it.

But sharing doesn’t have to stop there.  From a marketing perspective, one of the most widely used and successful viral tactics is the “Share This” button.  You see it everywhere online – blogs, news articles, videos, and more.  We just recently implemented it across our site, so patients can “Share This” treatment or symptom report, press releases, research findings, etc.  It’s an easy way to pass that “toy” across the cyber-sandbox to others who might learn or benefit from it.

It’s nice every once in a while to think back to what we learned as kids and figure out a way to incorporate those values into our adult lives.  Sharing is just one of those things.

So you weren’t the type to share your toys?  Feel like you share too much?  Comments are welcome below.