Rare and Undiagnosed Network joins forces with RARE-X to enable patient data collection for undiagnosed patients and families
Washington, DC — April 29, 2022 — Rare and Undiagnosed Network (RUN) has entered a new collaboration with the global data-sharing platform RARE-X to help people with undiagnosed conditions, accelerate diagnosis, become discoverable, and more easily participate in research. RARE-X is a nonprofit organization that enables patients and disease communities to easily collect, manage, and share their health data through best-in-class technology and patient support. In June, RUN will launch the new Undiagnosed Data Collection Program, supported by RARE-X.
“Rare and Undiagnosed Network (RUN) has always been about collaboration and sharing data. Whether empowering rare and undiagnosed patients and their families with genomic information, or building the community through advocacy, networking and support, RUN works to make life easier for the undiagnosed patient community,” said Gina Szajnuk, co-founder and executive director of the Rare and Undiagnosed Network. “So, when RARE-X came along, it gave us hope. It was a dream for not only my family but the entire undiagnosed rare disease community.”
Nicole Boice, founder and executive director of RARE-X, said there’s a natural opportunity for RARE-X to support undiagnosed patients. The RARE-X platform makes it easy to collect research-ready data, can be disease agnostic, is inclusive, and gives undiagnosed, N-of-1, and N-of-small patients the chance to be found by researchers. In addition, RARE-X provides a way for individual patients to create their own individual research-grade patient registry. This approach will provide unexpected insights, correlations, and discoveries for these patients.
“To have these undiagnosed patient registries sitting alongside other RARE-X supported disease-community Data Collection Portals allows researchers to search across the platform by disease or phenotype, catalyzing finding new correlations and identifying new patients and diseases,” said Nicole Boice. “Our approach also expands to support what many people in rare disease research have talked about when discussing cross-disease research. We have the ability to stand up research-grade, research-ready, patient-reported, real-world evidence that is consented by patients to be shared and for researchers to easily access.
The organization is using Undiagnosed Disease Day (April 29) to announce the collaboration with RARE-X. Undiagnosed Disease Day is an annual day of events and social media activity designed to raise awareness about what people with undiagnosed conditions face. To learn more about RUN, and Undiagnosed Disease Day, listen to the RARECAST podcast featuring Gina, Cristina, and Daniel Levine.
ABOUT RARE-XTM
RARE-X is a 501(c)(3) rare disease technology nonprofit focused on supporting the acceleration and development of life-altering treatments and future cures for patients impacted by a rare disease. By bringing together best-in-class technology, patients, researchers, and other technology vendors, RARE-X enables patient communities to gather structured, fit-for-purpose data to share broadly, benefitting from 21st-century governance, consent, and federated data-sharing technology. RARE-X is building the largest collaborative patient-driven, open-data access project for rare diseases globally. For more information, visit www.rare-x.org.
Media Contact:
Tom Hume, Marketing Communications – RARE-X