Our Promise
PatientsLikeMe is committed to putting patients first. We do this by providing a better, more effective way for you to share your real-world health experiences in order to help yourself, other patients like you and organizations that focus on your conditions.
Our Story
About PatientsLikeMe
PatientsLikeMe was co-founded in 2004 by three MIT engineers: brothers Benjamin and James Heywood and longtime friend Jeff Cole. Five years earlier, their brother and friend Stephen Heywood was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) at the age of 29. The Heywood family soon began searching the world over for ideas that would extend and improve Stephen’s life. Inspired by Stephen’s experiences, the co-founders and team conceptualized and built a health data-sharing platform that we believe can transform the way patients manage their own conditions, change the way industry conducts research and improve patient care.
Today, PatientsLikeMe is a for-profit company, but not one with a “just for profit” mission. We follow four core values: putting patients first, promoting transparency (“no surprises”), fostering openness and creating “wow.” We’re guided by these values as we continually enhance our platform, where patients can share and learn from real-world, outcome-based health data. We’ve also centered our business around these values by aligning patient and industry interests through data-sharing partnerships. We work with trusted nonprofit, research and industry Partners who use this health data to improve products, services and care for patients. (Read How We Make Money and our Privacy Policy for more.)