As 2009 comes to an end, we want to take this opportunity to thank all of our members, partners and general fans for another great year. Here’s a recap of some of the exciting happenings at PatientsLikeMe these past 12 months. Wishing you all a Happy New Year! Community Milestones This year, the 15+ disease […]
A Year in Review: PatientsLikeMe in 2009 Read More »
Every December 1st, we join hands with the HIV community at large in recognition of World AIDS Day. The theme of World AIDS Day this year is leadership — a fitting theme for the 2500+ patients who are leading the way through openness in the PatientsLikeMe HIV community. These leaders have chosen to share their
PatientsLikeMe Facing World AIDS Day 2009 Read More »
Check out the October issue of WIRED magazine! PatientsLikeMe makes “The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Will Change the World.” In an interview with Brendan Koerner (“Forget Medical Privacy“), Co-founder Jamie Heywood talks about how “the lack of openness [in medicine] is making us sicker” and how sharing individual health data can benefit you.
The Smart List (Forget Medical Privacy) and The Future of Healthcare Read More »
The media is abuzz at the moment with stories about social networks like Facebook and Twitter, carrying pieces on the good (Facebook Fan Page raises $10,000 for a Silicon Valley Food Bank), the bad (Facebook users are leaving out of mistrust and boredom), and the controversial (Social networking site for living organ donors). In the
Harnessing “New Media” for Patient Advocacy Read More »
Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS) and Progressive Muscular Atrophy (PMA) are two rare variants of the disease ALS. Normally, ALS affects the upper motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, as well as the lower motor neurons that send signals from the spinal cord directly to muscles. PLS and PMA are different because PLS only
Charting the course of PLS and PMA Read More »
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,
Sharing Is A Right As Well Read More »
When most people think of Parkinson’s disease (PD), they think of a shuffling gait, a shaky hand, and slowness of movement. As awareness has increased of the non-movement symptoms of PD, such as hallucinations and depression, we’ve seen the psychological consequences the disease can have too. More recently, studies in the scientific literature have been
Gambling in online PD patients higher than previously reported Read More »
“Open source software” is created and improved collaboratively, over the web, by the people who need it, even if they work for different companies in different industries on different continents. Similar to our Openness Philosophy, the premise behind open source software is that none of us is as smart as all of us. Software developers
We Share Too! Contributing Open Source Code Read More »
Openness. Privacy. These philosophies stand in direct opposition in the question of which is better for consumer health. Should people be open with their health information or private? Certainly there are times for both, right? Not according to some privacy advocates. On October 22, 2008, Deven McGraw from the Center for Democracy and Technology cited
Should You Share Your Health Information Online? Read More »
Mimi Yin over at The Common Data Project blog posed some interesting questions about data in our communities: Back in April, I wrote about the site PatientsLikeMe.com, which provides a wonderful new service that allows individual users to share the most intimate details of their medical conditions and treatments, which in turn creates a pool
How representative are PatientsLikeMe patients to the general population? Read More »
