A recent report on disease and the internet showed that an increasing number of people with chronic illness are turning to online communities for information and support from others suffering from the same ailment. This isn’t all that surprising given the fact online communities often replace traditional ones if a person is isolated. What is surprising, I prefer groundbreaking, is the site PatientsLikeMe accurately predicted a drug outcome before the published results by allowing its users to track their progress.

PatientsLikeMe, one of many social networking sites dedicated to health, has 65,000 members that span 16 different disease communities.