Patients Like Me

I've noted before that health blogging, and other forms of health logging can be good diagnostic tools and treatment trackers.  Blogging is an overly public way of doing so, a step down from there and with lots of features added is the platform patientslikeme.com.  It's a more encouraging group than other online support groups I've found because it's very well grounded in data.  Yes you can get on and complain about your life and have others commiserate, but you can also make factual logs of how you feel, the treatments you've tried, symptoms, conditions, and get back data on what kinds of treatments other people have found successful.  They also have printable reports for the purpose of sharing this data with your professional health care providers.

PatientsLikeMe Data is accessible to other site members, but you can avoid identifying information in your public profile.  The medical data is what they really want openly shared for the common good.

The downside of the platform is that your data may be sold to medical companies, but in the end it will bring down the cost of developing new therapies for your condition, and encourage companies to bring to market products that will help you, so it's not a horrible trade off.  Think of it as a very detailed version of voting for new chip flavors...

"PatientsLikeMe is a for-profit company (with a not-just-for-profit attitude).  Every partnership we develop must bring us closer to aligning patient and industry interests. Our end goal is improved patient care and quality of life." - How does PatientsLikeMe make money?

If you've not started a health log yet, and are looking for an easy to use online platform, I recomend you check out patientslikeme.com.