This post has been written in partnership with Alike, but all opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!

Did you know that you’re missing out if you’re looking for people with the same medical experience as you just by searching “Chronic Illness” on the web and FB groups? You’re also missing out if you’re just looking through the hashtag for your condition such as #RheumatoidArthritis. These strategies can help you find people in general with chronic illness, but they won’t help you find others with a lot in common with you and your health. What you really need is Alike.

What is Alike?

Alike is a free app that helps you to find people who are, well, like you. You get to connect to patients with a similar background, which could be people with the exact same illnesses as you, people who have the same medical condition(s) and keep a similar diet, people who are on the same medication as you, and so much more. 

Think of it as a social media app meets Yelp meets patient matching. You ever want to know what someone who treats rheumatoid arthritis with Humira has experienced? Before Alike, you had to include hashtags your target audience might be following and hope for the best. And even then, if you found the answer, you might be getting it from someone who is completely different from you other than your 1 shared condition. With Alike you can directly ask people who have RA and have tried Humira what their experience was, and best of all – your advice will come from someone who shares more than just a diagnosis with you

Plus, Alike combines clinical data with patient testimonials, which is the first app I’ve ever seen do so! I can see the prevalence of my condition over all, check out my medical records and get info about my condition and meds from the app itself and then interact with real people who share real tried-and-tested stories on top of it!. 

You know there are people out there like you who can help you; you just need to find them. Alike makes that happen.

When would I use Alike? 

There are plenty of times when you might use Alike! It’s an app designed to help you feel empowered when making decisions about your health and life, and it also helps you feel less alone. 

Some examples include:

• When you receive a new diagnosis
• When you’re prescribed a new medication
• When you want to know what medications are available for a condition
• When you’re thinking about making a lifestyle change for your condition
• When you’re going to have a medical test and you want to know what it’s like from people who have actually had it
• When you want to talk to other patients who are just like you

Basically, any time you want to talk to other chronic illness patients who are similar to you, you’re going to want to use Alike. 

How it works 

When you sign up, you can manually input your health information or you can connect your Alike account with your health provider’s app, such as MyChart. This way, you can input not only your diagnosable conditions but also when you had a certain type of surgery or when you were hospitalized. Again, though, you can manually input your medical history. 

I know that you might be worried about your privacy, but don’t worry too much: not only is all of your information on the back-end of Alike anonymized, but Alike doesn’t keep personally identifiable information. They couldn’t even backtrack your profile to you. You don’t even input personal information like your name. You set up a fictional username and your birth year – required by most apps – but you don’t submit your name or anything like that.

When you’re setting up your profile, Alike also has spaces for you to add if you follow a special diet, how much you exercise, topics you relate to, and more. Basically, it has ways for you to get the most out of your app as possible. 

What affects and impacts my life is different from what affects and impacts yours, so our app experiences should be different. Alike is definitely set up to optimize that! 

Once you’re all set up, you can peruse what other patients are asking. You can sort your home screen to show all posts – which means you see all questions that all patients with similar health to yours have asked, which could be a question about rheumatoid arthritis or endometriosis – or posts just by patients asking a question about a specific question. 

When you see a person has asked a question, you’ll see a ring around the icon by their username. How full that ring is shows how similar to you they are! So someone with a ring that goes a quarter way around is 25% similar to you, but someone with a ring that goes three quarters around is 75% similar to you. 

This is important because it helps you identify if a particular suggestion or question might be applicable to you. If someone suggests you try a treatment, but they’re only kinda similar to you, it might not be as helpful as a suggestion from someone extremely similar to you. 

If you’re going to ask a question, Alike asks you if you want to ask “More Alikes,” which means a more diverse group of people who have some things similar to you but not many, or “Fewer Alikes,” which means a smaller group of people who are way more similar to you. So if I asked More Alikes, it might send my question to people who have rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia, whereas if I asked Fewer Alikes, it might send it to people with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.

But Alike isn’t just for asking questions generally. You can also message people directly and build relationships that way. So if you come across someone who has everything you have, you can directly connect with them without publicly asking a question. 
Alike is free and is a great resource for making meaningful connections with people similar to you on your path to better health outcomes. Download it today!