March is endometriosis month, which, needless to say, is a special time of year for us. I’ve found myself thinking a lot over the last few weeks about where I want iCareBetter to be. I have put my own reputation and medical and business knowledge behind this project. (Of course, there are many other people to thank who have supported iCareBetter along the way.) Therefore, I would be ignorant not to assess our progress and shortcomings every day. While I am proud of our achievements, I see our shortcomings and will try to do better in the future.
Starting with achievements, we have overcome some very difficult tasks to uplift the endometriosis community. Our team has identified some of the best endometriosis experts in the world using a peer-reviewed video vetting method. iCareBetter has been able to increase and protect the integrity and transparency of the surgical vetting process and our community’s trust in it. We all know that, historically, it has been incredibly difficult to build trust in our community after so many failed attempts and empty promises. But, because of the selfless work of our leading experts, patient communities, and our team, an increasing number of experts are humbling themselves by going through the vetting process. This has attracted a large number of patients and communities to use iCareBetter in order to find a vetted endometriosis expert to put their lives in their hands, and that’s the ultimate reward and incentive for our work.
At the same time, there are certain areas where we have underperformed and have probably disappointed our partners and supporters. These include not having an expert in some highly demanding areas, and not running research to show the real impact of the true experts’ excision on endometriosis patients’ outcomes. I am not interested in making excuses, but I can say that, if we had enough resources, we would have tackled all these problems by now. With that being said, these will be our main areas of focus for the next coming months.
I personally believe we have done an unbelievable job in the past nine months since iCareBetter vetting was launched. There have been victories and challenges, of course; moments when I thought it was all over. That we had failed our patients and experts once again. But, because of you and your support, we’ve kept going. Now, we have a trusted and transparent vetting platform for surgeons and patients, something that was wanted and needed for a long time. I am very optimistic about the future. There are and will be new challenges and shortcomings down the road, but we are never going to let those stop us from improving every day.
PS.
We founded iCareBetter with personal resources to be a platform for patients to find trust and help. None of the physicians on it or advocacy partners have any financial interest in iCareBetter. We take advice from the experts but the company is run by its founders and employees.
