Data Sharing in Public Administration

Patientslikeme.com is an amazing effort regarding data sharing for the health community. See the TED video about the online service here. One amazing thing that the patientlikeme data gives us is faster information on a particular treatment than a clinical study can provide. The patientslikeme.com service collected data on ALS patients taking Lithium for example. The application was able to demonstrate that Lithium does not help ALS patients any more than those not taking Lithium and provided this information before a clinical trial was able to come to a conclusion. The clinical trial ended up showing the same results as patientslikeme.com was able to produce much earlier. Providing treatment success/failure rates faster helps patients and their families make more timely and well-informed treatment decisions. The patientslikeme service may also provide information on treatments that would never be available with a clinical study. For instance, there are many alternative treatments out there that would not have the funding to be tested. For instance, patientslikeme.com may provide information about the effectiveness of 5-htp in treating depression yet a clinical trial is not or may never be implemented to test 5-htp's effectiveness for the disorder.

patientslikeme.com has enormous potential1 to provide better, faster, and cheaper information than clinical trials on whether a treatment works or not. (I say potential because I see flaws in it's current state. For instance I joined and filled out a profile for my condition and it didn't allow me to select the prescription I am taking for it - although it listed others. This may lead to flawed data since it appears that I am not taking anything.)
Regardless of it's flaws - it is a very powerful data-sharing and forecasting tool and can be applied to other public challenges other than health care.

What was particularly impressive about this tool was the user interface and how it delivered unbiased, vast, and complex information very simply to the end user. One issue that could benefit from this in public administration is helping the public become more involved in the political process. In order for democracy to be successful it must have an educated populace that participates in the political process. An online service that collects a specific set data from those running for public office at the local, state, and national, even international level could allow individuals to see beyond the propoganda that typically diseminated about an individual. The data collected could be pre-set like with patientslikeme.com. For example, the data could show the education level, experience, political affiliation, for/against on issues, what election they are running for etc., percent of votes in previous elections etc. The key behind the service would be to engage citizens in the political process by providing them more clear information on candidates than they would otherwise have.