Today’s health care system is, unfortunately, fragmented with minimal lines of communication between specialists. The result is that more complicated diseases that require collaboration between disciplines go unidentified.

Through the Knight Enterprise Fund, Knight Foundation has invested in one company that aims to correct this fragmentation. CrowdMed is an online health care service that provides collaborative care for difficult medical cases. CrowdMed was inspired by a patient named Carly Heyman, who, like so many patients before her with complex cases, was passed from doctor to doctor with no answers for years.

Before getting sick, Carly was a peppy, accomplished, teenager growing up in Atlanta. She was the type to make the best out of any situation. Her middle brother suffers from Fragile X syndrome and even that didn’t get her down. Carly embraced this and published a book on the subject titled “My eXtra Special Brother.”

Before heading to the University of Georgia in 2003, Carly started to experience uncharacteristic crying jags. The situation became worse once she arrived on campus. She would wake up in the middle of the night either from crying or from severe night sweats that would soak the bed. One day, Carly found herself at a gas station with no idea how she had gotten there or even how to work the pump.

Carly’s parents came for her the next day.

For the next next three years, Carly was on an endless path of doctors, specialists, intrusive medical testing and massive amounts of medical bills, but answers remained elusive.

It wasn’t until Carly had the rare opportunity to see a multidisciplinary team of medical experts that she finally received answers. Members of the team all contributed their unique expertise and collaborated to properly diagnose Carly with Fragile X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency. The cure was a simple hormone patch, and within a couple of weeks, Carly was back to normal.

Today, CrowdMed offers this multidisciplinary approach to the masses. We have created an online community of medical professionals from different specialities and backgrounds that we use to help patients solve difficult medical cases online. Patients anonymously fill out an online questionnaire that reviews their personal and family medical history and their current symptoms, and then medical detectives collaborate to solve the case. At the end of their case, patients receive a report to take to their primary care physician for testing.

This approach seems to be working. To date, CrowdMed has resolved over 1,700 cases, producing a medically-confirmed diagnosis 75 percent of the time, reducing doctor visits by 39 percent and overall patient medical costs by 28 percent on average.

Now CrowdMed is the middle of its next round of fundraising. We’re looking to grow our network and to partner with employers and health insurance companies from all over the world to extend the reach of our services. We’ve had fundraising rounds before, but this time we’re doing it differently, using WeFunder. Wefunder allows for any passionate follower or supporter to invest in the future of CrowdMed, in keeping with our roots of being a community-based company. We’ve had much success so far, with people pledging more than $335,000. We hope to reach $1 million to expand our capacity and the reach of our services. Please join us in helping people find the answers they need.

For more information on CrowdMed, email [email protected], visit crowdmed.com and follow CrowdMed on Instagram @crowdmedofficial.