On average CrowdMed patients have been ill for 8 years, have seen 8 doctors and have cost $60,000

Jared Heyman is the Founder and CEO of CrowdMed, a site that harnesses the wisdom of the crowd to solve tough medical cases. I caught up with him at the 2015 Personalized Medicine World Conference in Mountain view in January. In this video interview, Jared explains how the site works.

In short, patients who have conditions that have not been able to be diagnosed via traditional medical office visits despite seeing multiple doctors, having multiple tests and costing many thousands of dollars, pay a small fee to post their case on the site. Medical Detectives (practicing and retired docs, medical students, nurses and interested others) review the information and ask the patient questions in an attempt to solve the case. Case-solving thought processes are shared online and the detectives learn from each other — just like what happens in resident’s report when docs are in training.

Detectives with the best diagnoses can earn a small amount of money, but for most, the real motivation is helping the patient, enjoying the intellectual challenge, and honing diagnostic skills. There have been 600 resolved cases so far and Jared says using the metric of providing an insight that led to a correct diagnosis or cure, the success rate has been 70% so far. Watch the video to learn more.

Read more here: http://thedoctorweighsin.com/harnessing-the-crowd-to-solve-difficult-medical-cases-online/.

This video is under BY-ND creative commons.