PatientsLikeMe, the world’s largest personalized health network, helps people find new options for treatments, connect with others, and take action to improve their outcomes. Get started at www.patientslikeme.com.

It all started with one patient: Stephen Heywood. When Stephen was diagnosed with ALS in 1998 at the age of 29, his brothers Jamie and Ben tried to treat his symptoms and slow his disease as it progressed. But finding information to guide their decisions was time-consuming and difficult.

PatientsLikeMe was born out of this frustration. Jamie and Ben, along with family friend Jeff Cole, initially launched PatientsLikeMe to connect ALS patients, but it quickly expanded, and in 2011, we opened the website to all patients and all conditions. Today, 500,000 people use PatientsLikeMe to report on their experience with 2,700 conditions.

PatientsLikeMe members have generated 38 million data points about disease, creating one of the largest repositories of patient-reported, cross-condition data available today. It all started with Stephen, and now it's helping many more improve their outcomes.

We’ll always focus on helping people measure and share their experience with disease so they can improve their outcomes and contribute to research. But the road ahead is exciting too, as we look to better understand the connection between biology and the experience of disease, its symptoms and treatments, and how disease progresses in patients like you.