Our goal is to bring the autoimmune community together in a scientific way, such that it will change the way that autoimmune disease is treated in healthcare today. The massive online community that has formed around chronic illness is ample evidence that something is wrong. Forums and Facebook groups provide immense value in that they connect people with autoimmune disease together and allow them to provide support and share information, but we want to go one step further and organize it all. Right now, everyone is on their own journey, communicating only bits and pieces of it in small posts here and there, which quickly disappear in the noise.
Data aggregation for autoimmune diseases has never been done at this scale and we’re excited to provide a resource to facilitate that. Users will record symptoms, treatments, and results using the Autoimmune Citizen Science mobile application. We plan to then aggregate that data and share it with our users so that they can see (anonymously) what is working for other people with similar symptoms.