Living with chronic disease, daily pain and fatigue is very lonely. You feel like nobody understands what you are going through, and nobody can help you. At least that’s what it feels like for me. 

Having a chronic illness is a full time job. Making sure you take your medication, going to your endless doctors appointments, trying to educate yourself on the best course of treatment, and making sure you get enough rest takes up all your time.

Chronic disease management is hard, and loneliness is one of the hardest aspects.

Find people who are medically like you

Recently I started using a new app, calledAlike Health. In this app you can speak to people who are medically just like you, find out which medication and treatments others are on, and have all your medical information in one place.

I personally really like this. No one has "one condition" and no one should be categorized according to their condition, this is the one place where you can see yourself and others on a holistic level.

It's hard to know what treatments are available and how your protocol stacks up. This way you can take a look at people just like you and find out what you may be missing. And all of this is done completely anonymously withyour utmost privacy in mind.

What is Alike Health?

Alike Health is a digital healthcare company that taps into the power of medical records by utilizing proprietary AI, crowdsourcing and big data to make personalized health a reality. The company is the result of a cybersecurity pioneer -- Amnon Bar-Lev, a physician -- Prof. Varda Shalev, and a Data Scientist --  Ohad Zadok , coming together to give patients the ability to gain a fresh understanding of their current treatments, and to change how people use their medical information to improve health across the world.

Alike harnesses the power of artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, and big data to build a healthcare social network based on clinical data. Alike’s novel technology generates personalized insights from patients like you, both from groups of similar patients that are more advanced in their journey as well as insights based on big data of millions of patients & medical records processed by artificial intelligence.

Traditional medicine is failing us

The law of averages can be misleading. Traditional medicine lumps all people with the same problems together, treating patients based on generalizations. Human beings, however, are complex mixes of different characteristics and medical realities, and should not be managed based on a single condition. Using machine learning, Alike groups people based on shared parameters, to generate precise personalized insights. 

Managing chronic conditions comes with its share of adversity. Many wait long months or years for a diagnosis, only to find out that their treatment protocol isn’t clear, many symptoms are invisible to the outside world and frankly speaking, no one really knows what you’re up against. With the use of AI technology, Alike connects you to communities filled with your Alikes - people with the same conditions, who are coping with the same challenges. Engaging with your Alikes in an anonymized space allows you to share and gain insights in a supportive, empathetic environment.

Make personalized digital health accessible

You may not know it, but the government recently took a major step forward.  A new regulation was introduced that makes it possible for everyone in the US to gain instant electronic access to their personal health records. This access could not have come at a better time, as advances in data science and artificial intelligence can help companies like Alike to create patient similarity networks based on these medical records. By pairing clinical data with your everyday personal testimonies, patients with chronic conditions can learn so much about themselves and gain empowerment to help others manage their conditions in the best possible way.

Patient similarities are at the core of healthcare transformation. By using cluster analysis to discover groups of highly similar patients, healthcare can be improved for individuals based on a number of conditions and characteristics, rather than generalized treatments based on single conditions.

Alike’s mission is to make personalized digital health accessible to each and every one of us. Patients can and should play a considerable role in improving their own health outcomes. Patients can contribute to their healthcare, if they are provided with assets such as tools, information, and environments to in which they can participate. This shifts the balance of care from the hospital and clinician to the community and the patient.

My opinion

To summarize, the app shows you others who are diagnosed with the same or similar conditions as you. You can look up medications and treatments that they actually receive .You can ask questions and get answers from peers or clinical physicians who also use the app.

I personally like the community aspect, where I have asked several questions in regards to my Fibromaylgia and Hashimoto’s Disease. 

The great thing about Alike is that Alikes (people who are medically like you) who I engage with are REALLY like me. The people who see my posts are females in the age range of 34-49 and live with the same conditions as me. Not just 1 similarity, but several similarities. I feel that they can understand me so much better because of this feature. Alike also take into consideration lifestyle, BMI, and other important characteristics which draw us closer to others based on our Electronic Medical Records. 

In The Unchargeables community we share stories with each other with the purpose of finding people who are experiencing the same symptoms. You may be able to find a similarity in another person's story, then you can talk together and this info might help you with your treatment.

The Alike Health app takes this idea to the next level (I’m a little sad I didn’t think of it myself). It matches your medical history, medications, treatments, and story all together. This is a holistic way of looking at health, which I like and believe can make a real impact on our chronic illness journey. 

Try it out yourself, it’s completely free.

Download Alike on iphone

Download Alike on android

*Alike Health is only available in the United States