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Traditionally, access to the wisdom of crowds in healthcare has been limited to doctors: hurried hospital rounds, case studies during medical school, or discussions with an interdisciplinary care team during residency. A new startup, CrowdMed, seeks to bring the wisdom of crowds<\/strong> to the patient<\/strong> by helping to solve the world\u2019s most difficult, rare, and complex chronic medical cases through online communication, collaboration, and brainstorming.<\/p>\n The inspiration for CrowdMed came from Jared Heyman, who saw his sister battle an undiagnosed rare illness, traveling to numerous specialists, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with no solution. She finally found a diagnosis after three years. After launching CrowdMed, Heyman posted his sister\u2019s case on the site out of curiosity. The correct diagnosis was found in three days.<\/p>\n Harnessing the power of the crowd to discuss and brainstorm root causes of illnesses has tremendous potential to disrupt the healthcare industry. Currently, healthcare issues are filtered through a primary care physician, who has no way of keeping up with the ever-evolving literature on the 7,000 rare diseases known to mankind today. Referrals often result in specialists viewing the patient\u2019s symptoms from the narrow lens of their own specialty, without holistically understanding their case and complex interplays between specialties. The reality is that no one single doctor can remain abreast of the vast amount of medical knowledge today. Although we would all like to believe we could be diagnosed properly if we just found that one genius doctor, the truth is that Dr. House doesn\u2019t really exist<\/strong>. Enter the crowd.<\/p>\n How it works:<\/u><\/p>\n Benefits:<\/u><\/p>\n Challenges:<\/u><\/p>\n Harnessing collective intelligence to crowdsource diagnoses for the most expensive and difficult patient cases poses massive disruption potential to the healthcare industry and to the role of the doctor as we know it. CrowdMed plans to partner with health insurers and providers to scale nationally, aiming to save billions of dollars in unnecessary healthcare costs and prevent needless suffering for patients.<\/p>\n The number of success stories from CrowdMed is countless. The growth potential is huge if CrowdMed can overcome resistance from physicians and bioethicists and leverage society\u2019s growing cultural and psychological comfort with crowdsourcing their most personal issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new startup, CrowdMed, seeks to bring the wisdom of crowds to the patient by helping to solve the world\u2019s most difficult, rare, and complex chronic medical cases through online communication, collaboration, and brainstorming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[689,126,28,24],"class_list":["post-1575","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","hentry","category-crowdmed","category-digitalhealth","category-health","category-healthcare"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/leveraging-the-collective-intelligence-and-effort-of-digital-crowds\/","yoast_head":"\n\n
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