Ben Heywood

PatientsLikeMe Acquires Online Pain Management Company, ReliefInsite

1 Comment / ALS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, Mental Health, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Rare Diseases / By

Today’s news release announcing acquisition of ReliefInsite.  Want to receive future announcements?  Sign up for our RSS feed on the press page. – – – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PATIENTSLIKEME ACQUIRES ONLINE PAIN MANAGEMENT COMPANY, RELIEFINSITE 20,000 Patients Reporting Moderate to Severe Pain on PatientsLikeMe Cambridge, MA and New York City, NY – February 16, 2010 – Today, PatientsLikeMe, the leading online community for patients with life-changing diseases, announces the acquisition of ReliefInsite, a pioneering online pain management company. “Right now, there are more than 20,000 patients on PatientsLikeMe experiencing real pain,” says Ben Heywood, President and Co-founder of PatientsLikeMe.  “By acquiring ReliefInsite, we can improve the way we help patients effectively manage their pain.” Conceived by founder Fred Eberlein in 2000, ReliefInsite’s patented online pain management technology developed into a secure HIPAA-compliant platform designed to help patients monitor their pain levels and share that information directly with their doctors. “I’ve spent more than a decade inventing and advancing the technology platform at ReliefInsite to help patients manage their pain and improve the patient-doctor relationship,” says Eberlein.  “I’m excited this work has led me to my new home at PatientsLikeMe, where we can work together to better align industry’s interests with …

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PatientsLikeMe and UCB Open Free Online Community for People With Epilepsy in the U.S.

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Pharmaceutical, Social Media Leaders Examine Real-World Impact of Epilepsy CAMBRIDGE, MA and ATLANTA, GA — (Marketwire – January 26, 2010) —  Today, PatientsLikeMe, the leading online community for people with life-changing conditions, and biopharmaceutical company UCB open the doors to a free online community for people living with epilepsy in the U.S. Focused on learning from patients’ real-world experiences, the online community allows members to create profiles that record and share their treatments, symptoms, as well as seizure type, frequency and severity. “As a patient-centered company, we are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance and adjust our approaches to meet patient needs,” says Iris Loew-Friedrich, Executive Vice-President, Chief Medical Officer, UCB. “We believe this community will be a source of information that will allow us to better understand people living with epilepsy and may help us design clinical programs that incorporate real-world patient needs and experiences in a measurable way.” Among the research being conducted, PatientsLikeMe and UCB are analyzing anonymized data shared by participating epilepsy patients, with their consent, via an online clinical survey built into the site to measure patients’ quality of life (including cognitive, social and physical function). Completed by 60 patients testing the site since mid-November, …

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A Year in Review: PatientsLikeMe in 2009

4 Comments / ALS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, Mental Health, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Patient Experiences, Rare Diseases, Research / By

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 communities at PatientsLikeMe became an online home to more than 50,000 members.   The fibromyalgia community was expanded this past fall to include patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, and we announced a new community scheduled to launch early next year for people with epilepsy.  In addition to celebrating our communities’ awareness days and months within the site and right here on the blog (including Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, MS and PD Awareness Months, National HIV Testing Day and World AIDS Day), many of our members also participated on PatientsLikeMe teams in walk/run efforts to raise awareness and money in the name of their disease.  Congrats to the 40+ teams walking at events to support non-profit organizations like ALS Association, National MS Society, NAMI, Parkinson’s Alliance, APDA, and the MS Society of Canada. The real-time sharing and learning happening on PatientsLikeMe was also highlighted in the report series …

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Health 2.0: Where do we go from here?

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A few nights ago, I was honored to give a keynote at the second Health 2.0 Northeast conference held right here in our Cambridge, MA backyard.  It’s exciting to see old friends and new emerging start-ups coming together to try and make a dent in the $2 trillion industry that is healthcare in the U.S.  In the world of Health 2.0, we have a lot of great opportunities to impact healthcare in a positive way, including shaking things up and putting patients back at the center.  With so many new and promising companies emerging in the space (many in attendance at the Boston event), we have to start thinking about what happens next.  How can we really make change, and what changes need to be made? I believe we, as the eHealth community, need to focus on two major goals:  1) solve patients’ problems, and 2) create business models that allow us to do #1.  The PatientsLikeMe business model is straightforward.  We build online communities where patients share structured information about their disease to help themselves and others.  In turn, we make money by selling that data.  We are open with our patients about how and why we sell this …

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Ben Heywood, PatientsLikeMe Wins Boston Business Journal’s “Champions in Healthcare” Award

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Last Friday (September 26, 2008), our Co-founder and President, Ben Heywood, was honored at the Boston Business Journal “Champions in Healthcare” award ceremony. Ben was one of two recipients recognized in the Innovation category. These regional awards highlight outstanding individuals and companies from the Boston-area who are making a difference in healthcare, including winners across five categories (Administrators, Community Outreach, Employers, Innovators, Nursing and Physicians).  Here is the full list of honorees. Held at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, the event was kicked off with a keynote address by Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Leonard Zon, an internationally recognized pioneer in the fields of stem cell biology and cancer genetics.  Next, Boston Business Journal’s Editor, George Donnelly, and Lisa Vanderpool presented each honoree with an engraved, crystal award in front of a room full of colleagues, family members and friends.  The winners were also profiled in a special edition of the paper last month (August 15, 2008). It’s truly an honor for our company to be spotlighted in this way, particularly in our own “backyard,” which happens to be populated with some of the best and brightest healthcare professionals and companies around.  In his thank-you remarks, Ben touched upon his personal …

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