Being diagnosed with a serious disease is a life-changing event. Too often, patients don’t know where to turn for information and advice. Now a website has taken up the challenge of providing a community of patients and doctors that inform individuals with tools, information, and experiences to take control of their illnesses.

Founded in 2004 by three MIT engineers, PatientsLikeMe is a privately-funded company dedicated to helping patients diagnosed with life-changing diseases. The goal of the site is to enable people to share information that could help improve the lives of others. 

“Our job is to allow a conversation with the computer that will match a conversation between two patients,” Jamie Heywood, founder of the A.L.S Therapy Development Institute and of PatientsLikeMe.com explained to the New York Times. “Then we capture that dialogue and turn it into useful, clean data.”

The user-generated content on the site breaks down information into two levels, first, there is the quantitative breakdown of symptoms, dosages and data that is displayed in the form of charts and graphs. The second, is the online forums where members share their advice, provide details on their symptoms, notes on what hurts, when and for how long, as well as treatments, what made them feel better, what made it feel worse.

With this information, the members of PatientsLikeMe have created a rich database of disease treatment and patient experience which could and does save lives.