World Orphan Drug Congress USA Conference Archives

Next Generation Online Health Communities

Next Generation Online Health Communities: Data empowering patients and caregivers improves care and accelerates research By Richard Tsai The World Orphan Drug Congress USA 2020 (WODC 2020) provided four days of powerful panels and keynotes about collaborations, successes and failures in creating what rare disease patients and families need and desire most – effective treatments for their conditions. In one failure turned to success, Kim Stephens shared her story involving inappropriate clinical trial endpoints. Stephen’s son has Hunter Syndrome, an extremely rare inherited condition where children lack an essential enzyme in their cells that eliminates waste . [...]

Accelerating Rare Disease Research

Accelerating Rare Disease Research By Richard Tsai COVID-19 has challenged the non-profit arena’s fundraising arm, which is largely based on face-to-face events like galas, runs and walk-a-thons. This limit on the number and amount of donations has occurred just as rare disease patient organizations have reached a tipping point in their influence on government and industry. According to Malcolm Gladwell, the “tipping point” is “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point,” where “ideas...spread like viruses do.” 1In this case, the tipping point refers to the efforts made by rare disease patient organizations to provide [...]