The Myeloma Crowd Launches HealthTree® Aimed at Accelerating a Cure for Multiple Myeloma

As seen on PR Newswire

The Myeloma Crowd™, a division of the CrowdCare Foundation, today announced the launch of HealthTree®, a new online tool to help Multiple Myeloma patients find their best myeloma treatments and accelerate research toward a cure.

HealthTree is the first resource of its kind where patients can track their myeloma lab values across all treatments, see personally relevant treatment options they could consider, view collective reports of anonymized data, find personally relevant clinical trials and contribute de-identified data to be aggregated for review by myeloma researchers and the patient community.

HealthTree.org is led by Jenny Ahlstrom, a myeloma patient and former systems engineer for IBM, who built the tool that would have helped her when she was diagnosed. Along with her husband Paul, an investor and entrepreneur, the Ahlstrom's approached Jenny's myeloma like they would a startup company.

"The healthcare industry still acts as if the internet doesn't exist with every patient having to reinvent the wheel to learn about their disease," said Jenny Ahlstrom. "HealthTree gives the 80 percent of patients not seeing a myeloma specialist access to information from the experts that they can share with their doctor. Patients could be living years longer with today's wide range of therapies if they received the right treatment at the right time."

Watch why the Ahlstroms built HealthTree. 

Using machine learning, the same technology that allows Amazon and Netflix to predict what consumers will want to buy and watch, it is possible to identify patterns that could inform treatment decisions, improve patient outcomes and advance a cure for myeloma.

The Ahlstroms have just completed a 50-city tour during the beta test for Healthtree.org. To date, there are almost a thousand patients using the tool that will enable new hypotheses around a cure by sharing their myeloma  patient experiences and data.

HealthTree is free for myeloma patients. More information is available by visiting this link.

About Myeloma Crowd/CrowdCare Foundation

The Myeloma Crowd is a division of the CrowdCare Foundation, a patient-driven 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Myeloma Crowd provides patient education, advocacy and research funding for multiple myeloma. Jennifer Ahlstrom founded the CrowdCare Foundation, Myeloma Crowd and also hosts online radio interviews with top myeloma specialists worldwide to educate patients and promote clinical trial participation. www.myelomacrowd.org