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jheyman

20 karma · joined September 24, 2012

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredheyman/

YC Badge: 0x4465f55e7f93097036d9af6d2d68c3b933828f30

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jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
While we don't disclose our full list of final diagnoses, I can give you some statistics from our 700+ cases resolved to date:

-- no single diagnosis is more than 2% of the total, except for one (Lyme disease at 2.3%) -- 95% of these have come up as final diagnoses only once or twice in the history of the site

So it's fair to say that it's a VERY long-tail list. Also:

-- our current success rate is 70% (i.e., the patient told us that we brought them closer to a correct diagnosis or cure) -- about 50% of our final diagnoses are medically confirmed by the patient's doctor

These statistics are based on our post-case surveys, which not all of our patients answer, but they should be directionally accurate.

jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
The site has about $40,000 in cash reward offers up for grabs right now, so somebody should be motivated enough to find out!
jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
CrowdMed founder here

The more expensive packages only allow higher-rated Medical Detectives to fully participate, which reduces the quantity but increases the quality of participants. FWIW, we've found that beyond 30 or so Medical Detectives, results quality doesn't really improve anyway.

We've gone back and forth a lot on whether to make flagging public. The advantage of public flags is that users flag more carefully, the disadvantage is the potential for reciprocal flagging behavior.

jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
While CrowdMed's focus is helping patients find a "known" diagnosis that can help return them to health, it can also be used to match up patients with an "unknown" disease with fellow patients or practitioners who can help them. It's part medical forum, part social network, and part marketplace.
jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
CrowdMed founder here

See "How do you vet your Medical Detectives?" and "Who is your crowd?" at https://www.crowdmed.com/faqs

Our final reports are automatically generated in PDF format once a case closes.

It's funny, just a few weeks ago a patient offered to invest his life savings in our company because he so believes in our mission and the value we provided. Unfortunately we had to turn him down, because our seed round closed a couple years ago :)

jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
CrowdMed founder here, happy to chime in on this question.

We consider it up to our Medical Detectives to determine whether the patient's symptoms are physical or psychological in origin. If the latter, then 'somatization disorder' or 'hypochondriasis' are perfectly acceptable diagnostic suggestions.

That said, a lot of patients are given psychological diagnoses from physicians (i.e., "it's all in your head") only to discover on our site a physical root cause to their symptoms.

jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
See the "Privacy, Security, Liability, & HIPAA Compliance" section at https://www.crowdmed.com/faqs
jheyman··on CrowdMed: We've solved hundreds of the world's most difficult medical cases
On https://www.crowdmed.com/our-stories scroll down to Patient Success Stories and you'll see patients with more definitive resolutions. Those are completely anonymous, unlike the videos, so more medical detail can be provided.