New Company Crowdsources Expert Opinions to Solve Complex Medical Mysteries

Dr Gregory House, was the chief character in a popular TV series, House, that ran for 177 episodes ending in 2012.  Although hated, due to his rather brash personality and unconventional methods, he eventually came up with the correct diagnosis to cases that were amongst the most complex and confusing in medicine.  I for one enjoyed every episode—with significant reservations of course—and found myself trying to come up with the diagnosis before Dr House figured it out.

In real life, people also suffer from true medical mysteries and have few options to have them correctly diagnosed except for the rather expensive and time consuming process of seeing numerous physicians and traveling great distances.  Highlighting this struggle was the sister of Jared Heyman, an entrepreneur who nearly lost his sister to a medical mystery that took 3 years, two-dozen physicians and $100,000 to solve.  The mystery was solved because a highly trained interdisciplinary team of top-notch experts collaborated on the case until they reached a consensus-based diagnosis. 

This experience became the inspiration to start a company that would allow others facing a mystery diagnosis to have access to a better option.  His company, CrowdMed, does this via an interactive website using “crowd wisdom” and prediction software at a cost no more than a hotel room.

CrowdMed crowd sources physicians, and professionals from wide range of other disciplines, to become medical detectives.  Their detectives include chiropractors, dentists, midwives, nurse practitioners, optometrists, osteopaths, clinical social workers, audiologists, pharmacists, podiatrists, psychologists, respiratory therapists, physician assistants, and even medical students from 17 countries.  A licensed physician with fully vetted credentials called “the moderator,” oversees every “case.”  The patient can have any and all detectives try to solve the challenge or can take the option of only including medical detectives with verified medical credentials for their particular case. 

The Moderator’s job is to ensure that all suggestions are submitted with relevancy and appropriate medical reasoning, so as to allow patients to receive the most accurate information possible. 

Since various medical detectives are motivated by different rewards, CrowdMed uses a point and case based incentive system to distribute the rewards, which include both cash and reputation ranking.

CrowdMed reports that their typical patient feels unheard by their current provider and has been suffering from a chronic undiagnosed illness for months and in some cases years.  Nearly all of the patients have seen two or more physicians and have a wide range of symptoms, both physical and psychological. 

One interesting aspect of CrowdMed is how their medical detectives gain influence.  Gone is the typical caste system in medicine based on specialty and training site. It has been replaced by a system that takes into account their ability to solve actual cases and make solution driven suggestions.

CrowdMed differs from other health forums in that they have implemented a number of standards and features to filter out noise from the diagnostic suggestions.  For instance, they provide moderators to oversee the medical detectives working on a case.  CrowdMed also uses patented prediction algorithms to assign probabilities to each diagnostic or solution suggestion—algorithms that learns over time. 

Currently, they have handled over 1000 cases with a high degree of accuracy. Crowdmed is quickly becoming another example of how innovative companies founded by passionate people are coming up with the next generation medical system.