In the NY Times today, there is a nice article on PatientsLikeMe. The article does a fair job of showing how it goes beyond a traditional social network to an effective learning tool for patients with serious neurologic diseases. One patient's story is indicative: "He expected the sort of online community he’d tried and abandoned several times before — one abundant in sympathy and stories but thin on practical information. But he found something altogether different: data." There is a uniqueness here: "The members of PatientsLikeMe don’t just share their experiences anecdotally; they quantify them, breaking down their symptoms and treatments into hard data. They note what hurts, where and for how long."
These quotes indicate the challenge for Health 2.0 - to go beyond adapting Web 2.0 tools to healthcare and create useful sites which can actually modify how patients approach  their health and disease.


Technorati: Health 2.0