PatientsLikeMe launches 'data for good' campaign

PatientsLikeMe, an online network of patients with chronic disease, recently launched its “data for good” campaign that promotes health information sharing to advance research.

In a series of public service videos, the company encourages the donation of health data to improve one’s own condition, help others and change medicine.

This campaign follows the publication of an Institute of Medicine paper that highlights a PatientsLikeMe survey, which found that 94 percent of U.S. adult social media users with a medical condition agree with sharing their health data to help patients like them and should be used to improve the care of future patients.

“The ‘data for good’ campaign is our way of tipping our hats to the massive amounts of data that our members have shared to date. It’s also meant to inspire more people to contribute their experiences to accelerate research,” said Michael Evers, PatientsLikeMe executive vice president of marketing and patient advocacy, in a statement.

To date, PatientsLikeMe has contributed more than 21 million structured data points about their disease experiences including treatment and symptom reports, demographic information, health outcome surveys and lab data, among others.

More information on the campaign is here.