One Mind and PatientsLikeMe join forces to help people with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury

Collaboration Will Uncover Real-World Experiences, Generate Patient Data That Improves Daily Living and Overall Understanding of Conditions

SEATTLE, WA—June 12, 2014—One Mind and PatientsLikeMe announced a new multi-year collaboration to help the millions of people worldwide who are experiencing post-traumatic stress (PTS), traumatic brain injury (TBI), or both. The two organizations will work together to expand and enhance the PatientsLikeMe online registry experience for people with these conditions, to provide better resources for day-to-day living, and to capture more patient-reported data for research.

Building on the headway One Mind has made in seeking out real solutions for patients, One Mind CEO, General Pete Chiarelli, U.S. Army (Retired), said the collaboration will address longstanding issues for people with all forms of PTS and TBI. “You only have to look at the way we diagnose and treat people to know that we’re decades behind in our understanding of these conditions. We have an amazing ability to save soldiers on the battlefield, but we don’t do a good job addressing their invisible wounds. And we prescribe a mix of off-label drugs because nothing has been developed specifically for their condition. We need to look to the future to improve outcomes and lives, and this innovative partnership will do just that.”

Almost 8 percent of adult Americans will experience PTS (including the disorder known as PTSD) at some point in their lives, according to R.C. Kessler’s findings from The National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) Report. In addition to veterans, victims of sexual assault and others who have experienced a traumatic event may develop PTS. TBI is broadly defined as an alteration in brain function or pathology caused by an external force that can occur at home, at work, during sports activities, or on the battlefield. In 2009, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were at least 2.4 million emergency department visits, hospitalizations, or deaths related to TBI across the country, and that the leading causes of TBI are accidents, sport-related injuries or other incidents.

“We are both of one mind when it comes to the challenges of living with and researching these understudied and largely misunderstood conditions,” said PatientsLikeMe Co-founder and Chairman Jamie Heywood. “Our partnership with One Mind and the individuals dealing with PTS and TBI will provide insights about effective treatments from people in the real world, and drive new understanding about gaps in care. It will also provide a new resource where people are empowered to help themselves as they learn how to live better with their condition.”

One Mind is also supporting multi-center clinical studies called TRACK-TBI and CENTER-TBI, which will follow thousands of TBI patients over three years. Both studies enroll patients within 24 hours of their injury and are focused on improving treatments through developing new diagnostics tools such as imaging protocols and biomarkers. Heywood added that in the future, the patient-reported data from the TBI community on PatientsLikeMe may be combined with the TRACK-TBI and Center-TBI data, as well as other studies, to create a rich and unprecedented set of information about people’s real-world experiences.

One Mind and PatientsLikeMe are actively seeking nonprofit and other partners to grow the online community and learn together about people’s real-world experiences. People living with any form of PTS or TBI can join fellow members of the PatientsLikeMe community today to become early users of the site and provide feedback on future customizations for the community. Go to www.patientslikeme.com for further information.

About One Mind
One Mind is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to benefiting all affected by brain illness and injury through fostering fundamental changes that will radically accelerate the development and implementation of improved diagnostics, treatments, and cures; while eliminating the stigma. One Mind believes in open science principles and creates global public-private partnerships between governmental, corporate, scientific, and philanthropic communities. Visit us at www.1mind4research.org or follow us via Twitter or Facebook.

About PatientsLikeMe
PatientsLikeMe® (www.patientslikeme.com) is a patient network that improves lives and a real-time research platform that advances medicine. Through the network, patients connect with others who have the same disease or condition and track and share their own experiences. In the process, they generate data about the real-world nature of disease that help researchers, pharmaceutical companies, regulators, providers, and nonprofits develop more effective products, services and care. With more than 250,000 members, PatientsLikeMe is a trusted source for real-world disease information and a clinically robust resource that has published more than 50 peer-reviewed research studies. Visit us at www.patientslikeme.com or follow us via our blog, Twitter or Facebook.

 ###

CONTACTS

ONE MIND                                                              
Brooke Whitney
Office: +1 206.946.1768
brooke.whitney@1mind4research.org           

PatientsLikeMe
Margot Carlson Delogne
Mobile: +1 781.492.1039
mcdelogne@patientslikeme.com

Please follow and like us:
Scroll to Top