La Crowdsourcing medicine. Opportunità e sfide per il futuro della ricerca clinica

Crowdsourcing is an approach to accomplishing a task by opening up its completion to broad sections of the public (the “crowd”). Moving to the medical field, Crowdsourced health research studies have arisen as a natural extension of the grown of platforms in which sick people ask for receiving advices and help from clinical or lay experts. The spread of crowdsourcing medicine allows researchers to engage thousands of people to provide either data with lower cost and higher rapidity, giving a fundamental contribution to the spread of 4P medicine model (predictive, preventive, personalised, and participatory medicine). This article focuses on the present and future scenario of the crowdsourcing medicine. It describes some experiences and platforms, considering the pros and cons from the point of view both of patients and researchers.