provides patients that take part in its studies with "givebacks" which concisely and rapidly give them feedback in lay language as to the results of research in which they have participated so they can understand how donating their data has been useful for research. the company's best known scientific endeavor relates to an online refutation of a clinical trial in als. in 2008, a small italian study was published suggesting that lithium carbonate could slow the progression of als. in response, hundreds of members of patientslikeme with the disease began taking the drug off-label. using the self-reported data of 348 als patients, patientslikeme conducted a 9-month long study which demonstrated that lithium did not slow the progress of the disease. the team suggested that online collection of patient self-report data was not a substitute for randomized placebo-controlled trials, but it might be a useful new form of clinical research in certain circumstances. a later study described how patients attempted to use the same tools to unblind clinical trials in which they were enrolled to try and see whether or not the experimental drugs they were taking were working. a 2016 collaboration with dr rick bedlack of the duke als clinic aims to overcome some of the burden of traditional als trials by allowing patients to take part in a clinical trial of a nutritional supplement, lunasin, from their own home with just two clinic visits rather than regular monthly appointments. participants completed “virtual visits” to record their alsfrs-r and other health information in between initial and final on-site visits. synthetic controls were matched to the intervention arm based on demographics and similarity scores of disease progression using algorithms developed at plm that analyzed longitudinal alsfrs-r data from the existing plm population. this enabled clinicians to effectively power their study while further reducing on-site visits. this virtual model has resulted in fast and effective trial recruitment, retention, and adherence. led by plm, recruitment of trial participants for duke was achieved in less than half the expected time. for the second ongoing study, plm members are being recruited utilizing algorithms to identify individuals predicted to have similar progression. the intervention arm is invited to participate virtually for all aspects of the trial while combination of historic and newly generated untreated individuals will serve as the control arms. these cohorts with similar expected rates of progression reduce the total number of participants required to determine treatment efficacy. corporate affairs and culture business model describing itself “a not just for profit,” patientslikeme does not allow advertising on its site but rather keeps the site free for users by selling research services as well as aggregated, de-identified data to its partners, including pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers. typical commercial services include helping to optimize the designs of clinical trial protocols, developing new patient reported outcomes, or identifying the severity of symptoms in specific patient groups. the company enforces transparency about who uses the data and partners have included most of the largest pharmaceutical companies worldwide such as ucb, novartis, sanofi, avanir pharmaceuticals and acorda therapeutics. awards and recognition in 2007, the company was named as one of the "15 companies that will change the world" by business 2.0 and cnn money and added to the list of "top health it innovators" by fiercehealthit . in 2008, patientslikeme received the prix ars electronica award of distinction and in march, featured in a new york times magazine article entitled "practicing patients", by thomas goetz, who later went on to feature the site in his book "the decision tree". later in 2008, a television segment with sanjay gupta featuring patientslikeme was aired on the cbs evening news. fast company (magazine)'s 2010 list of most innovative companies ranked patientslikeme at #23. a may 2010 new york times article entitled "when patients meet online”, outlined the platform's potential for advances for research. in 2012, sanjay gupta featured a research project conducted in collaboration with patientslikeme on cnn's the next list, profiling collaborator dr max little. in january 2013, the company was featured as a clue on jeopardy! in 2016, co-founders jamie and ben heywood were awarded the 2016 humanitarian award by the international alliance of als/mnd associations. in 2017, patientslikeme was named by fast company as one of the top 10 most innovative companies in biotech.