PatientsLikeMe, a network of patient communities, has been diversifying its collaboration partners this year. Although pharmaceutical companies have been its traditional customers, earlier this year it began a collaboration with drugstore retail chain Walgreens and worked on a study with Biogen Idec.
Now it’s working with Partners HealthCare in a move that’s designed to help the provider better understand how patients access its health information.
As part of the collaboration, Partners patients will be able to access PatientsLikeMe through its patient portal, Partners Patient Gateway. Partners wants to use the collaboration as part of a series of projects to better understand how patient-generated health data from the bedside can influence health outcomes, patient engagement, care coordination and patient satisfaction. Those projects are expected to begin later this year.
Partners clinicians will also get a crash course in PatientsLikeMe so they can help caregivers and patients get more out of its support network and other resources.
Partners Population Health Management Associate Medical Director Dr. Adam Licurse said of the collaboration:
“We know that as patients become more engaged in their care, they have better care experiences, make more informed decisions based on their goals, and in some cases can actually receive higher value care at the end of the day. Peer mentorship, patient self-management, and patient education are all critical pieces to that puzzle. We believe PatientsLikeMe’s online patient community provides a meaningful solution to help meet these needs.”
Biogen Idec worked with PatientsLikeMe to evaluate Fitbit activity trackers for people with Multiple Sclerosis so their doctors could assess their activity levels between appointments. PatientsLikeMe also deepened its relationship with AstraZeneca, which inked a multi-year, global deal to factor in patient insights as part of clinical trial design. Most recently, PatientsLikeMe added Merck veteran Jason Johnson as head of global research and development
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
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