What Data Do We Sell? A Continued Discussion about “Data Scraping”

In response to the Wall Street Journal article published last week, we’ve had a lot of great discussions about the role of honesty and transparency. Transparency is about you – members of the PatientsLikeMe community – knowing how we make money and what we do with the data you’ve entrusted to each other and PatientsLikeMe.… Continue reading What Data Do We Sell? A Continued Discussion about “Data Scraping”

PatientsLikeMe in Wall Street Journal: Transparency, Openness and Privacy (cont’d)

Journalist Julia Angwin of the Wall Street Journal just published an article describing how a major media monitoring company, Nielsen BuzzMetrics,  scraped our forum last Spring.  (See my previous blog post on the incident – “Transparency, Openness and Privacy”) Julia’s piece includes details regarding how this incident happened, how we (and you) responded and more. … Continue reading PatientsLikeMe in Wall Street Journal: Transparency, Openness and Privacy (cont’d)

Transparency, Openness and Privacy

The following message was sent this morning to all members of PatientsLikeMe.  Please read what we have to say about openness, sharing and its privacy implications and join the conversation. **** Dear PatientsLikeMe Members, What are the privacy implications of sharing in this open, online community?  We talk a lot about this and, as a… Continue reading Transparency, Openness and Privacy

Sharing, Openness…and Privacy?

Every so often, we sit down to try and make our business objectives clearer to our patient communities.  Why?  Well, we can’t have a business without you and our communities can’t exist to help patients without a business. This often results in our Privacy Policy and User Agreement being updated to help clarify our goals… Continue reading Sharing, Openness…and Privacy?

Health 2.0: Where do we go from here?

A few nights ago, I was honored to give a keynote at the second Health 2.0 Northeast conference held right here in our Cambridge, MA backyard.  It’s exciting to see old friends and new emerging start-ups coming together to try and make a dent in the $2 trillion industry that is healthcare in the U.S. … Continue reading Health 2.0: Where do we go from here?