The Wisdom of the Crowd

Dr. Lisa Sanders, longtime author of a medical article in the New York Times Magazine, is on to something.  She is trying to find a diagnosis for individuals with rare diseases.  She has a new show on Netflix, called Diagnosis, and I am hooked.

Dr. Sanders seeks out the most unusual cases that doctors are stumped by and puts them out on the internet.  She feels the wisdom of the crowd will help if not find a cure, at least give the patient a diagnosis.  Dr. Sanders puts the information out, hoping people with similar symptoms, or researchers from around the world that may be working on an unusual disease, to see her post, and speak out.  Often an individual case will get thousands of responses, with doctors and lay people offering their opinions.  Through the use of the internet, Dr. Sanders has brought families with rare conditions together so they have a community of people who understand what they're going through, even if there is no cure.  In other cases, the internet helped a young woman from Las Vegas find a cure for her chronic extreme muscle pain, from a team in Turin, Italy, who just happened to be researching her specific condition.

To me, this is one of the great uses of the internet.  It has become a resource and an informational source like no other.  People from all over the world can contribute in a big way to solving medical mysteries.  There is nothing more frustrating than going from doctor to doctor to try to get a diagnosis on your condition.  I know this first hand from the 6 months it took for Ron to get an ALS diagnosis, and this is a disease doctors know a little about.  Take a rare condition that doctors may have never seen, and the situation becomes much worse.

If you have the time, check out Diagnosis on Netflix.  I have watched four episodes, and can't wait to watch the next one.  Episode one is my favorite.  It shows the power of persistence, the awesome reach of the internet, and it has a happy ending.