Photo credit: Flickr user Alex Proimos.

Thomas Krafft is vice president of marketing for CrowdMed, which Knight Foundation supports through its Enterprise Fund. CrowdMed harnesses the knowledge of health experts online to collaboratively solve medical cases.

After nearly three frustrating years, Carly was desperate for answers. She suffered from a serious medical condition, but more than a dozen doctors, countless medical tests and over $100,000 in medical bills still could not tell her what was wrong. Carly had once been a vibrant, healthy teenager, but now she could barely get out of bed. Her symptoms and the emotional stress were pushing her to the breaking point.

Finally, after a rare opportunity to consult with a top-notch interdisciplinary team of medical experts from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Carly received an answer: “Fragile X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency” (FXPOI)—a rare genetic mutation found in just one of every 15,000 people. Even more astounding, the treatment of Carly’s condition involved a simple hormone patch, which effectively eliminated all of her symptoms in less than one month.

Today, Carly is fully recovered, with a new family of her own, and she is actively achieving all of her personal and professional goals. Prior to her diagnosis, Carly was starting to wonder whether her life was already over.

It was this event in Carly’s life that prompted her brother, Jared Heyman, to develop a way to help other people who were desperate for answers they were not receiving from their health care providers. Jared founded CrowdMed, a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup which today harnesses the wisdom of crowds to help solve even the world’s most difficult medical cases.

Carly’s medical case was ultimately solved by collaboration among an interdisciplinary team of medical experts. At CrowdMed we take this model to the next level, using patented crowdsourcing technologies and an easily accessible online platform that aggregates collective intelligence and collaboration among a world of medical experts. This “wisdom of the crowd,” combined with advanced analytics, produces diagnostic suggestions that are presented to patients often within days of submitting their cases on CrowdMed. Patients may then use CrowdMed’s diagnostic report in consultation with their doctor and health care providers to finally get answers to their most important question: What is wrong with me?

Health care today depends largely on whether or not the primary care physician has all the answers. With more than 13,000 known diseases and disorders, it is highly unlikely for any one doctor to know every possible condition associated with every set of symptoms. CrowdMed’s new approach has proven that a large group can be smarter than any one individual or even an expert, as long as the collective wisdom is adequately captured, aggregated and analyzed.

During early testing of the CrowdMed platform, Jared submitted his sister’s anonymized case information to the crowd to test the system. More than 300 people participated, evaluating the same symptoms that had been provided to Carly’s original doctors. In three days, the crowd gave Jared their answer: Fragile X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency.

In the past year CrowdMed has helped solve hundreds of medical cases for patients around the world, and this number is quickly growing as word spreads of the new service. Anyone can submit a case on the CrowdMed website for free (with a $50 refundable deposit), or along with a cash reward offer to draw more attention to their case. We use incentives to increase participation, and the overall quality and confidence levels of suggested diagnoses. Every CrowdMed “medical detective” who contributes to the diagnosis ultimately selected by the patient shares in both point and monetary rewards, and CrowdMed receives a 10 percent share of individual case rewards. In the near future, we also expect revenues from partnerships with self-insured employers and plan providers, in an effort to reduce their overall healthcare costs. Thousands of people with diverse backgrounds in medicine, health care, education and research have already joined the crowd, and we’re continually recruiting new medical experts to help solve cases.. 

Our approach and health care innovation helps people to overcome obstacles and silos that exist within the medical establishment—empowering patients and assisting doctors who simply cannot know everything about every medical condition. Although “crowdsourcing” is a relatively new and popular phrase used to describe this effort, the concept of “vox populi” (literally “the people’s voice”) has existed since the dawn of civilization. CrowdMed is proving once again there is power in numbers, wisdom in crowds and many opportunities to innovate health care to improve diagnosis, treatment and outcomes for patients.