PatientsLikeMe Names Kim Goodwin and Sally Okun to New Web and Patient Advocacy Positions

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— March 19, 2013—PatientsLikeMe appoints Kim Goodwin and Sally Okun RN to two newly-created positions that will keep patient needs upfront as the company continues to enhance its website and drive industry and government to make more patient-centric decisions. Kim Goodwin has been named Vice President (VP) of User Experience (UX) and Sally Okun has been promoted to VP of Advocacy, Policy and Patient Safety.

PatientsLikeMe Co-founder and President Ben Heywood says the appointments underscore the company’s “patients first” mission. “We’ve been committed to understanding and representing patient interests for years. With Kim and Sally in these roles, we’ll be in an even better position to keep patients at the forefront of all we do – from how we develop our website to how we represent patient interests at an industry and policy level.”

Kim Goodwin
In her role as VP of UX, Kim will evolve the information and structure on www.patientslikeme.com to help people live better lives with their conditions. She plans to expand member involvement in the website development process to improve usability and to make sure the website’s content answers their most important questions. She will also make it easier for members to find and connect with people who share not just the same condition, but the same values and experiences. Additionally, Kim and her new team will improve how researchers and providers conduct research and interact with members on the site.

Kim’s expertise in design has made her one of the most distinguished UX experts in the world. She is a frequent speaker and the author of the 2009 bestseller Designing for the Digital Age, which is heralded as the most comprehensive how-to guide in the field. Before joining PatientsLikeMe she was VP of Design and General Manager at California-based design firm Cooper. Over the years, Kim has also worked with clients including Lexus, Cardinal Health, Abbott, Medtronic Diabetes, Boeing, Cisco, and Best Buy. Her healthcare experience includes work for companies delivering diagnostic and treatment devices, consumer health education and tracking, and desktop and tablet-based electronic medical records.

Sally Okun
As VP of Advocacy, Policy and Patient Safety, Sally plays a vital role in ensuring the patient voice is heard, collected and disseminated to affect better treatment, services and care. As the company’s liaison with government and regulatory agencies, she will bring the patient voice to worldwide healthcare discussions and educate policy makers on the benefits of sharing health data. Previously, she developed the company’s drug safety and pharmacovigilance platform, which monitors patient data for potential adverse events. In this new role, Sally will continue to expand the website’s drug safety content and ensure the data collected about treatments and their impact become more transparent to the community at large.

Recently named a 2013 TEDMED speaker, Sally joined PatientsLikeMe in 2008 and led the team responsible for the website’s medical ontology and curation of patient-reported health data. She has since been a frequent speaker at policy workshops and forums and has contributed to peer reviewed publications and discussion papers for the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and others. She also co-authored a chapter for Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach, an upcoming Elsevier textbook. A registered nurse for over three decades, Sally’s clinical practice specialized in palliative and end-of-life care. In that time she also participated in numerous clinical, research, and educational initiatives of national significance.

About PatientsLikeMe
PatientsLikeMe 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. PatientsLikeMe is a trusted source for real-world disease information and a clinically robust resource that has published more than 30 peer-reviewed research studies. Visit us at www.patientslikeme.com or follow us on our blog, on Twitter or via Facebook.

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