At TED, a social platform dedicated to patients is about to be unveiled.

According to foreign media reports, a dedicated social platform for patients to be launched soon. PatientsLikeMe (patient like me) can build a communication platform for patients and researchers and provide standardized self-test tools for patients.

No one is happy to have their privacy and personal information delivered to Facebook and Foursquare. However, more and more users are sharing their medical records and records on social networks, hoping to improve treatment. Recently, a social platform designed to help researchers understand patient information met with the public at the TED conference.

PatientsLikeMe, funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a 1.9 million-dollar establishment, is the exclusive social network for chronically ill patients. On this open scientific platform, patients can measure progress in the treatment of their own illnesses, and researchers can access their medical data.

So far, nearly 200,000 users have created and shared their medical records on PatientsLikeMe-usually using standardized questions and answers or tests from me to check. For other diseases, the social platform will also provide tools to create, evaluate, and optimize standardized testing procedures, as well as data and open source authorization mechanisms to collect user data based on the "Creative Public License Terms".

The PatientsLikeMe project was announced at a TED conference by PatientsLikeMe research director Paul Wicks Paul Wicks. The social platform will accelerate the spread of medical data. At present, medical data are generally owned by private enterprises and are closely protected by information security laws. It usually requires authorization to collect such data.

"The gap between testing and medical care remains to be filled," Paul Wicks at the TED conference. When you have the right metrics and methods, you can do amazing things .... We will be able to understand and study these diseases--but not just out of curiosity, not for public publication and profit, but for overcoming diseases one after another and throwing them into history books. ”

There are thousands of diseases, but few methods are available for patients to have a self-test. Paul Wicks For example, multiple sclerosis patients can use a self-test form consisting of 7 questions, and so far 30,000 patientslikeme users have been filled in. Paul Wicks hopes to create similar standardized self-test tools for other diseases.

By working with patients, Paul Wicks and his colleagues are developing a social platform that will provide patients with a wide range of self-test tools. PatientsLikeMe builds a bridge between patients and researchers, and can standardize data. Therefore, PatientsLikeMe can become a most practical social platform. On this platform, users are willing and eager to share the most intimate and sensitive personal information.