PatientsLikeMe 2 - Grow To Serve Better

Continued from last post, PatientsLikeMe (PLM) shows great potential, but seems have some problem to sustain its growth and expansion. Why is this happening?

The first problem is its business model. PLM doesn’t charge the patients. The website doesn’t display ads. The revenue comes solely from the buyers of its data. However, the value of its data can be questioned, as quite a portion of the patient users doesn’t provide accurate or useful information, and PLM is unable to verify the information. Additionally, PLM doesn’t have enough channels to sell its data, making its revenue very limited.

The second thing is that PLM isn’t making good use of the modern technology. Although it has its own Facebook, twitter and YouTube pages, there were not a lot of visits. It also has a blog on its official website, posting abundant medical news and interesting healthcare topics, but most of the posts have zero or only one comment. The biggest weakness, I think, is that PLM doesn’t even have a mobile application. WebMD, and CureTogether are PLM’s direct competitors, and they both released mobile app. “If you love something, make it mobile.” It’s hard to understand why a platform like PLM, collecting data in a very innovative way, has given its strength of innovation away by not following the mobile trend.

Another problem is the competition. As mentioned earlier, WebMD and CureTogether have taken away a great deal of PLM’s market. WebMD is more for medical practitioners and researchers, and CureTogether has a very similar model as PLM. The one using the same model is experiencing similar problems, but WebMD can plays as a best practice in the market. From its website’s contents to the user interface, it deserves that kind of activeness.

In terms of solution to PLM’s current problems, there are several strategies I can think of. PLM’s website could provide more interesting information for patients to view. It may be helpful to open a new sector displaying intriguing health-related knowledge or content, which will attract health-oriented online searchers apart from patients. It could also improve its disease categories besides the life-changing diseases, such as ALS and cancer, as there are also some other long- term diseases lacking of effective treatment, such as hay asthma.

PLM could improve its search engine optimization by improving its rank in search results for keywords like “online patients community”, “patients information sharing” etc. This will help patients or web users who surf on net can get easier access to the website and perceive it as the keyword description.

For social media, PLM could come up with marketing campaigns to increase followers. For instance, PLM could sponsor medical-related events and influential medical institutions’ activities (Johns Hopkins Hospital for instance), and participate in the Twitter and Youtube interaction.

PLM was one of those named “TheNext Disruptors: 15 companies that will change the world”. I personally very fond of the great incentives of the founders of this company, and I believe with some improvements, it can better serve the patients and help with finding better cure to disease.

A video from PLM's YouTube posting. The Patient Voice: Garth Callaghan, The Napkin Notes Dad.