Alexandra Carmichael
The KurzweilAI.net article Patients and Researchers Collaborate to Find Medical Cures said
Patients suffering with the daily pain of medical conditions now have a place to go share information and resources with other patients and researchers.
CureTogether, a San Mateo, CA startup, plans to announce Thursday a free health research service to bring together patients and researchers to make discoveries in a new, collaborative way.
The first conditions being studied are migraine, endometriosis, and vulvodynia; each affect more than five million Americans. Patients will also be able to share ideas and provide their anonymous medical data to an aggregate database available "open source" to any researcher in the world to study.
"We chose these conditions because they are underfunded, involve daily pain, and have personal meaning for us," said cofounder Alexandra Carmichael. "We saw the suffering of our close family and friends with these chronic conditions, and we wanted to do something to help." So they partnered with the Chandran Family Foundation for Healthcare Research and Education and researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "We may expand to other conditions if enough patients come together to request it," she added.
Alexandra Carmichael
Her understanding and translation of customer needs resulted in a
product praised for its intuitive ease of use in more than 20
independent journals, including Science. Visual Cloning was licensed by
over 450 organizations in 37 countries, with applications ranging from
developing new treatments for diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and cystic
fibrosis, to increasing agricultural yields by reducing the need for
pesticides and fertilizers, to improving industrial processes such as
brewing and electronics manufacturing. Hitachi acquired the technology
in 2006.
Alexandra also helped to design the first social web application for
bioinformatics. She is now cofounder of
CureTogether,
an open source health research company that brings patients and
researchers
together to collaborate with each other on the path to finding cures for
human diseases. An active blogger and
Tai Chi evangelist, she is
dedicated
to finding creative ways to use her combination of skills to help as
many
people as she can in the world.
She authored
Voices from The Body Chronic: An Update from Alexandra,
Voices From The Body Chronic: Ray of Light After 10 Years of
Pain,
The 10 Pillars of Learning Anything,
The Empath and the Missing Tooth,
Transhuman Transition,
Math Explosion,
What I Need,
Electric Blood, and
Transitions and Novelty.
Read her blog
Earth Change.
Alexandra earned her B.Sc. (with honors) in Molecular Genetics and
Molecular Biology at the University of Toronto - University of St.
Michael's College in 1998.
