Ex Google Chief Launches ‘Smart Patients’ Online Community
The former chief health strategist at Google, Dr. Roni Zeiger, has launched a new online community for cancer patients and caregivers called Smart Patients.
The patient community has been set up to help its members learn from each other about different treatments, search for clinical trials and the latest science related to their diagnosis, and share best practice from a patient perspective. Zeiger co-founded the site with Gilles Frydman, who set up the Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) in 1995.
"I learned a tremendous amount during my six years at Google, from creating an online personal health record, to using the web for health search," Zeiger explained.
"I discovered that patients are highly motivated to share knowledge and often search for clinical trials and new research when they have a life-threatening diagnosis. Our goal at Smart Patients is to help cancer patients get better care by learning from each other in an online community with social networking and search technology. Many patients with cancer become extraordinarily knowledgeable about their specific disease, and when they get together in a network, the learning that happens is impressive."
The site has the support of a number of partners, including The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, the not-for-profit 'open science initiative' Cancer Commons, biotech firm Oncosec Medical and the digital healthcare marketing agency WorldOne Interactive. WorldOne Interactive’s SVP, Jake Coniglio, commented that “partnering with Smart Patients aligns with our mission to support the physician decision journey and improve patient outcomes. Oncologists, in particular, are interested in patient experiences and clinical outcomes. Providing physicians the opportunity to hear and learn from a robust network of patients having educated discussions on clinical trials and the latest science is a powerful educational tool."
The founders are intending to use the site to conduct voluntary surveys in order to share anonymous insights from patients with partners in the healthcare industry. This follows a trend of increasing awareness of the value of patient input in determining what the most important health outcomes are; the PatientsLikeMe patient network recently received a grant of $1.9 million from the RWJF Foundation in order to develop a research platform geared towards exploring patient-centred outcome measures.
They have also chosen not to include advertisements on the site.