With every new member at PatientsLikeMe, there is more data generated for research, more dialogue about individual experiences, and a more expansive support network.  Additionally, with more patients we can become the world’s largest and loudest representative of the patient voice.  To that end, our job in marketing is to share your stories and tell the world about our community to bring in more patients.

Here are highlights of some of the work we did this year to promote your voice and attract the 32,000+ new members we welcomed to the community in 2010.  (Enjoy the video recap below as well.)

Social Outreach

• With a full year under its belt, 2010 was a big year for the PatientsLikeMeInMotion^TM program. With slick new t-shirts and a new sign-up form, the program just about doubled in size from 38 teams in 2009 to 60 teams in 2010.  More than 1,000 people were rocking PatientsLikeMe t-shirts for their disease awareness walks this year and the company donated $14,800+ in our members’ names to almost 50 nonprofit organizations.  (More about our nonprofit partnerships and work we’ve done with them is coming from Molly Cotter next week).  Finally, we launched our PatientsLikeMeinMotion^TM Flickr page, which features hundreds of photos of all of you walking for team PatientsLikeMe.

• In January 2010, PatientsLikeMe launched its first ever podcast called PatientsLikeMeOnCall^TM (hosted by our newest marketing team member, Aaron Fleishman). Through a series of podcasts this year, PatientsLikeMe provided insight from our thought leaders on topics most important to you, spotlighted work with partners and gave patients a place for their real voices to be heard. With more than 1,000 subscribers to date, PatientsLikeMeOnCall^TM is ready to bring more content to all of our listeners in 2011. Thanks for stopping by and listening!

• Along with PatientsLikeMeOnCall^TM, PatientsLikeMe continued to spotlight what you’re saying, learning and sharing through our blog (yes, we do manage the content for this lovely page!), Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. Our Twitter followers continue to grow with more than 2,100 followers. Our Facebook page now has more than 1,000 fans and our YouTube videos have a combined number of 74,258 views total, with 35,469 views this year alone.

Media Coverage:

Throughout the year, PatientsLikeMe was featured in a number of media stories (see our press page) that highlighted how you are making a difference for other patients and the healthcare industry as a whole.  In fact, many of you were able to share your stories with the world – from your disease experiences to your participation on PatientsLikeMe.  Thank you to everyone who contributed!  Some highlights include: Fast Company (“2010 Most Innovative Companies”), Fortune/CNN (“Tweet your chart”), Wall Street Journal (“Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on Web”), Fox News videos, Women’s Health (“Feel Sick Click Here”), NPR (“What Happens When People Migrate To The Internet”), New York Times (“When Patients Meet Online”), TIME magazine (“Group Therapy”) as well as articles in Bio-IT World, InformationWeek, Nature Biotechnology, PharmaTimes, and SmartMoney.

Events, Direct Mail and Newsletters
In addition to attending some events (e.g., 2010 Transplant Games, Parkinson’s Unity Walk) to talk directly to patients, PatientsLikeMe also reached out to medical centers (e.g., epilepsy and transplants) to inform physicians about how patients are benefiting from being members of PatientsLikeMe (see above).

Finally, we’re thrilled to hear how much you enjoyed the monthly community newsletters in 2010.  Altogether, we published 90 newsletters this year and featured many of your fellow community members in patient interviews (which also appeared here on the blog). Based on your feedback, we also finally launched an archive section on our site so you can catch up on all the latest and greatest from PatientsLikeMe.

Spreading the word is what we do in marketing, and we can say it is has truly been a pleasure telling the world about all that you do and all that you share through PatientsLikeMe.  2011 will only be better.  Thank you and Happy New Year!

The PatientsLikeMe research and development (R&D) team is excited about what we can all share and learn in 2011.  Here’s a look back at some of what patients like you shared with us, and what we then shared with the world, in 2010.

The R&D team published and presented some unprecedented insights based on what you shared with us this year.  In addition to attending and presenting at some noteworthy conferences in 2010, we also published a series of blogs and podcasts pulled together just for you.

Based on your feedback, the R&D team also implemented some changes to the medical architecture that will help improve the research we do, as well as your experience as a patient on the site.  Ultimately, we are working to develop tools that help you answer the question: “Given my status, what is the best outcome I can hope to achieve and how do I get there?”

Today and tomorrow, we’ll be highlighting some of the work we’ve done in 2010 focused on various communities.  Today, we start with the following (listed from newest to oldest community):

Organ Transplants

• Researcher Catherine Brownstein MPH, Ph.D. presented a poster at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Renal Week in Denver. We compared the profile of our Transplants Community to published data from the UNOS/OPTN databases and found that about half of our patients knew about the exact degree of tissue matching they had with their donor. We found the fewest mismatches in organs that had come from deceased, rather than living donors. We also found that within the living donors the closest matches came from siblings, followed by parents, children, and then any other relative.

Epilepsy

• In December, the team attended the annual American Epilepsy Society (AES) conference and presented a poster comparing our data to the Pharmetrics insurance claims database. We found that our Epilepsy Community is a little more likely to be female, more likely to be in their 20s-40s, and that they are more likely to be taking multiple anti-epileptic drugs than the broader epilepsy population. Exploring the biases in our data set and being transparent about them is one of our core values as a science team.
• PatientsLikeMe is running an ongoing patient-reported outcomes (PRO) study with UCB to measure the physical, social and mental well-being of people with epilepsy over time. By the end of 2010, members of our Epilepsy Community had completed more than 1,300 PRO surveys. Thanks to all of you who contributed.

Fibromyalgia

• The R&D team recently blogged about a report comparing our Fibromyalgia Community to the wider fibromyalgia population and revealed we are now able to declare with confidence that our community very closely matches the fibromyalgia community at large.
• In 2010, we published a study entitled “Sharing Health Data for Better Outcomes on PatientsLikeMe” in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). The study, conducted across several of our communities, established a link between sharing health data and benefits experienced on our site. The fibromyalgia-specific findings were that 21% of fibromyalgia members of our site strongly agreed or agreed that they had changed physicians as a result of using PatientsLikeMe, higher than the rate in MS (15%), mood (10%), Parkinson’s (9%), HIV (8%), or ALS (6%).
• In response to popular demand for more research in fibromyalgia, the R&D team has also started reaching out to members of the scientific community to design research studies to take place in early 2011.

Mood

• Looking again at the JMIR study specifically within the Mood Community, we found 26% of users agreed or strongly agreed that using the site had reduced thoughts about self harm; 23% agreed they had decided to start therapy or counseling after interacting with others on the site; and 22% agreed they needed less inpatient care as a result of using PatientsLikeMe.  Here’s a video where I present some of these results, and give a walk-through of the Mood Community, at the UMASS Medical School’s Psychiatry Grand Rounds this year.
• We also recently introduced a new tool in all of our communities called “InstantMe” to help you put your experiences in context.  Based on the feedback we received from members of our mood community about the pilot tool (called “InstantMood”), it is now available for everybody.
• In response to popular demand for more research in mood, the R&D team has also started reaching out to members of the scientific community to design research studies to take place in early 2011.

More highlights, including a video, coming tomorrow.

Thanks everyone for a great 2010.  As we kick off the New Year, PatientsLikeMe would like to take a quick look back at the road we’ve traveled together this year.  We think of all these improvements as laying the groundwork for even more exciting changes to come in 2011.

At the start of 2010, we set out to tackle two very important goals that could help you, our members, get the best possible experience out of PatientsLikeMe:  1) unify the way we collect medical information and 2) give more information back to you so you can see how you fit in and compare your experiences with others.  Kate Brigham recently talked about some of the improvements we’ve made on the second goal in her Share and Compare post, but I’d like to share a bit more about the first goal.

Our communities have a lot in common despite their different conditions and health concerns.  As Tommy Maker said in a recent newsletter interview, “I’ve learned that we all care enormously for each other and are very eager to help those who find themselves in the same boat as we are.  But most of all I’ve learned that I am not on my own.”

“We are all in this together” is the sentiment we hear from you time and time again.  In that spirit, we made a lot of changes to unify your experiences across all our communities.  Many of these improvements started in one community where some of you tried functionality and gave us good feedback so we could improve things and share them with all patients.  With the rollout of every product development below, you can now better share and compare your experiences.

Here are some examples of ways our communities have helped each other learn and grow in 2010:

• Flash charts: We piloted these in the ALS community last January and received a lot of great feedback.  Since that successful pilot, we converted the profile charts in all our communities to these more flexible and easier to understand charts.  This change also enabled future enhancements, like re-organizing your profile and better Doctor Visit Sheets.

• Condition History: While many of the questions you answer on PatientsLikeMe are very specific to your medical condition, there are a lot of questions that apply to any and all patients.  When did your symptoms start?  Do you have a diagnosis?  Are you taking any treatments?  Now members across communities answer many of the same questions in the condition history so everyone can share and see how their answers compare with the rest of the community.

• InstantMe: This idea of asking you a quick question about how you are doing started out as InstantMood, and was available only to members of the mood community.  They gave us great feedback and helped us to improve it (especially adding a “neutral” answer choice) before we rolled it out to patients in all our communities in November.  It’s now called InstantMe.

• Quality Of Life: The quality of life survey we just made available to all members at the end of December was piloted in the HIV and Organ Transplants communities.  By having a way to measure your social, mental and physical well-being, now you can gain a better understanding of how your condition affects you – the whole you.

Thank you to all the members of our community who continue to share and learn along with us.  Watch this year in review video to see how you all have contributed to making the patient experience on PatientsLikeMe one of a kind.