Company Overview IControlMyHealth, Inc. (ICMH) is a non-profit 501c(3) patient advocacy healthcare organization founded with a passion to improve people’s health through – education, empowerment, evidence generation, and behavioral change programs.
Patient Education
Science is making progress at an astonishing pace and is constantly unlocking new possibilities. In many cases, conventional pharmaceutical medicine is the best solution for a disease or condition, whereas, in other instances, it is not. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is showing significant promise in alleviating symptoms and reducing suffering in many disease areas. Several of these alternative therapies have fewer side effects and have demonstrated clinical benefit, while others are still at an exploratory stage. Since, more and more patients, caregivers, and the healthy are exploring CAM, it is important that they have access to a reliable resource that provides honest, scientific, unbiased, up-to-date, and independent views on these therapies.
In addition, due to a lack of awareness, knowledge, and training on CAM, many Health Care Providers (HCPs) do not encourage its use. This can lead to sub-optimal care and unnecessary suffering for the patient. Our hope is that our educational platform – www.icontrolmyhealth.org will lead to stronger collaboration and partnership between patients and their healthcare providers so that the patients can make the best decisions for their own health. By becoming more engaged, patients will ultimately experience the best possible health.
Within patient education, we currently focus on three key areas:
- Treatment Options
- Medical Advances
- Chronic Diseases
Treatment Options
The advent of the Internet and globalization has opened channels of knowledge exchange, which seemed impossible before. Today, consumers have the opportunity to evaluate many more options before deciding what’s best. The opportunities within CAM are growing day by day, which offers hope to reduce suffering and provide a potential cure.
ICMH aims to cross the geographic, psychological, and social barriers by making consumers aware of CAM options. Importantly, the need is to not only educate patients on the benefits of CAMs but also caution them against using internationally available niche CAM treatments that lack objective scientific evidence and seem to offer little or no benefit. Through this, consumers will be able to assess the benefits and disadvantages of each, have a productive dialogue with their healthcare provider, and decide what is best for them.
Medical Advances
The field of medicine is progressing at such a rapid pace that it is very difficult to keep up with all the new technologies, product launches, innovative treatments, and revisions to treatment guidelines. In addition, the conflicting research results end up confusing more and educating less. IControlMyHealth aims to constantly monitor the healthcare arena and keep consumers abreast of medical advances through consensus-driven research and not on the basis of just isolated research studies. The editorial board provides unbiased reviews on each of these advances so that the patients, consumers, and other interested individuals can benefit the most.
Disease Information
IControlMyHealth provides credible and unbiased information about diseases and ailments in an easy-to-understand layman language. Through this, the intention is to educate the patients, caregivers, and others to have a better understanding of why, how, and what is next about a disease or a medical condition. IControlMyHealth editorial team and advisory board compile this information through extensive research, reviews, and collaboration with other organizations, as necessary. Our references section lists all the materials reviewed during the process. The resource section provides links to relevant websites that provide credible information with a similar mission as ours.
Patient Empowerment
Chronic lifestyle diseases are creating havoc in our lives and wrecking our healthcare system. Fortunately, many of these can be prevented or delayed if people are educated to take the onus of their own health and empowered with the right information and tools. IControlMyHealth aims to accomplish through the following activities:
- Educate people on the benefits of healthy living and disease prevention
- Make available educational and motivational tools and applications so that people are continuously engaged in important decisions about their health that can have far-reaching implications
- Help improve the quality of care for the uninsured, high-risk populations, minorities, or socio-economic disadvantaged individuals
- Enhance care by making available free/subsidized second opinions or other tools/programs
Evidence Generation
ICMH is fully committed to helping patients improve their overall health. To accomplish this mission, ICMH has partnered with governmental agencies, private organizations, and international non-profit organizations to generate objective data regarding the safety and efficacy of CAM therapies.
Behavioral Change
The IControlMyHealth team is passionate about making and difference and believes that it cannot fully accomplish its mission if it is not engaged in its community by empowering people to lead healthier and happier lives. Therefore, IControlMyHealth collaborates with local, national, and international organizations and institutions to deliver a wide variety of behavioral change programs, within its community, at workplaces, and remotely through its website – www.icontrolmyhealth.org.
Current programs offered by IControlMyHealth include:
- CDC’s Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP)
- Chronic Disease Self Management
- Obesity prevention and awareness in children
- Stress and mental disorders support/management