PatientsLikeMe has been awarded a $1.9 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to create the world's first open-participation research platform for the development of patient-centered health outcome measures. The platform is part of a new open-science initiative that puts patients at the center of clinical research process and will allow researchers to pilot, deploy, share, and validate new ways to measure diseases. An "idea worth spreading," the initiative will be spotlighted today in a presentation at TED2013 by Paul Wicks, Ph.D., PatientsLikeMe's Research Director and a new TED Fellow.
Health outcome measures are typically developed by clinicians and researchers, and collect information that meet their needs. Linked with the PatientsLikeMe patient network, the new platform will help researchers develop health outcome measures that better reflect patients' experiences with a disease, and assess health and quality of life in ways that matter to patients.
"This project is really exciting for us because it focuses on data that is developed by patients in the real world, where they spend most of their time, as opposed to controlled clinical settings," says Brian Quinn, team director of RWJF's Pioneer Portfolio, the team funding this project. "We believe it has the potential to help researchers better understand the course of disease and open up important paths for the development of new therapies. We're eager to see what medical revelations will emerge when researchers focus first on patients' needs and concerns, and openly collaborate with patients and each other."
PatientsLikeMe is an established network for patients who want to monitor their health, improve their outcomes, and contribute to medical research and discovery. Nearly 200,000 patients, representing more than 1,500 diseases, have created longitudinal records centered around their health outcomes.